On his return to Lystra during his second missionary tour, Paul had his eye on a potential companion to work alongside him. Previously, Paul had worked closely with Barnabas, but had parted ways at the outset of his second journey. Even though he had brought Silas along with him, a vacancy remained. So when he arrived at Lystra, he identified a young man full of faith to join in this gospel ministry. Timothy represents in many ways the central point of the book of Acts. The Jerusalem council had just met to delineate exactly how to blend new gentile believers into the church comprised mostly of Jewish believers (Acts 15). Timothy was of mixed parentage. His father was Greek. His mother was a Jewish believer (Acts 16:1). Raised in the faith of his mother and grandmother, Timothy would have already been familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament. As one of the disciples from Paul’s previous visit to Lystra, what Paul found upon his return was a young man of profound faith. We cannot know for certain his age, but it seems likely that Timothy was still only a boy, around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journeys, traveling throughout Macedonia and Greece. At times, Paul entrusted Timothy with the care of local churches, such as at Berea or Thessalonica. We can picture, though, that Paul valued Timothy as a close companion, referring to him as his “true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At various points, Paul commends Timothy to various churches, such as when Timothy was sent to minister at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17 and later 16:10), or when he was sent to minister at Philippi (Phil 2:18-23). Timothy was included as a co-author of several of Paul’s letters, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. From all of this we gather that Timothy was a gifted and capable companion, even during his earliest days traveling with Paul.

What Timothy exemplifies is a young person exhibiting spiritual gifting in a powerful way. Later in his life, even after many years accompanying Paul, he was still a young man when Paul advised him to “let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). The point I am making here is that spiritual gifting can be evident and powerfully expressed by young people. Therefore, I believe that we can begin exploring gifting during the high school years, enabling students to begin a process of discernment and practice that will put feet to their faith in powerful ways.

Learning about Spiritual Gifts

In this year’s Bible class taught to freshmen, we walked through 1 Corinthians 12-14. Here we get one of several lists of gifts in the New Testament. Compare, for instance, the list in 1 Cor. 12:7-11 with that in 12:28-30 as well as with those in Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 4:9-11. Each list contains different gifts. This means that no single list is comprehensive or exhaustive. So the first lesson to learn about gifts is that they can be tricky to pin down and define with exactitude. This points to the need for discernment and dependence. By discernment, I mean the process of continually asking the Lord for clarity as to how he desires to work through someone to edify the people of God. And by dependence, I mean that the gift itself is not actually the most consequential part of what we are learning. Instead, using a God-given gift is really the training ground for prayerfully and faithfully connecting ourselves to his work in and through us. 1 Corinthians 13 shows us that the gift itself will pass away (13:8-10). It is the love that is expressed through the gift that will endure forever.

Walking through the three chapters of 1 Corinthians 12-14, we are presented with three major ideas. First, we learn the nature of spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Here we get a couple listings of the gifts, but also ideas such as the unity of the body of Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13, we learn about spiritual gifts as the “homework” we receive to practice loving one another. Paul anticipates that we will one day see our Lord face to face, so our current practice should be a training ground for learning how to live a serving and sacrificial love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Then in chapter 14, Paul teaches about how gifts ought to be exercised in an orderly and considerate way. Here we get the principle that gifts are meant to build the church up (14:12).

There are challenging points of discussion that accompany these passages. It can be difficult to walk through these chapters without tackling one or two of the controversies contained in them. For instance, we encounter topics such as the availability of all gifts today (some Christian traditions view the miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy as no longer available). There are topics pertaining to authority in the church, which can erupt into differences in church polities in a multi-denominational setting. Perhaps the most difficult controversy to tackle is the roles of women in the church. A teacher resource I found to be extremely helpful is D.A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit. He carefully lays out different theological positions and proposes reasonable solutions to thorny issues.

Learning to Own One’s Faith

One of the chief goals in learning about spiritual gifts is to help students make the connection between their emerging biblical faith and the practical outworking of that faith in their lives. To accomplish this, it is imperative to lay a strong biblical foundation. One must know what one believes. Some students will have a very detailed and robust knowledge of the Bible and theology, while others will have less knowledge. So, I advise a program whereby students come away with a good grasp of the storyline of the Bible and the essentials of the faith. As high schoolers, students can be entrusted to read on their own and begin practicing disciplines such as daily prayer, regular Bible reading, and so forth. Learning about spiritual gifts, then, gives them further ownership of their faith and new avenues to put feet to their faith.

Having students take a few spiritual gifts tests is the next step in their learning. After laying a strong foundation in the biblical text, we then have them explore by way of tests some potential giftings the Lord may have bestowed upon them. Here are two tests I found online. The website Spiritual Gifts Test is run by the ministry of Jeff Carver. I like this site because it has a test geared towards youth. To take this test and receive results, students must create an account. I found that this site has really solid definitions of the gifts for students to learn about their personal gifting and connect that to solid biblical teachings. Another site is giftstest.com, a free online tool produced by the Rock Church in San Diego. There are other tests available out there, but these are two good examples of questionnaires aimed at elucidating an individual’s possible gifting. I want to emphasize the word “possible,” because no single test can definitively tell a person what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing within a believer.

This is why we need to spend time reflecting. Once students have taken a couple tests, they have some results to read and digest. They now begin a process of writing up what they think their gifting is by listing the top results and using scripture to clearly define their gifting as best as they can discern. For students who may not have had much opportunity to serve in any ministry context, it is important to consider moments when they have experienced genuine joy, or times when others have commented on their potential gifting. I also spend time working one-on-one with them in order to hear their thoughts and provide my own insights.

I also have students write up plans they can make now that they have discern one, two or three possible giftings. These plans might be along the lines of learning more about spiritual gifts, or speaking with a youth pastor about spiritual gifts. They might consider opportunities to use spiritual gifts in a ministry at church, or to join a missions trip. In other words, having considered what the Lord is doing through them, they should now follow Paul’s teaching that these gifts are for the edification of the church.

Learning about Life’s Mission

Having spent the better part of a decade providing college guidance, the major framework I use with students is to consider their life’s mission. I can think of no better way to think about college than to view those years than within a context a long-range vision of why God has placed this person on the planet. It can be difficult for students to have a clear vision of this life mission, so it takes time and good counsel to draw this out of them. Here’s where I think learning about spiritual gifts can be a moment of clarity for students. By gaining an insight into their relationship with God, and a sense of where God wants them to serve, they begin to understand that their life has a mission, and that whatever kind of schooling they do, it should be intimately tied to that mission. It is imperative that counselors use effective questions to draw out of students their own values and sense of their life mission. We must restrain ourselves from inserting our own vision or coaxing them into a preconceived notion of what they ought to want in their lives. Only when they have come to their own conclusions can they genuinely be satisfied with this vision of their mission in life. Some of the questions I ask have to do with what kinds of values to they hold, what kind of person do they want to be when they are 20, 30 or 40, and what kind of parent would they want to be.

This does not mean that one’s spiritual gift is somehow tied to a college major or career. That being said, it could be that discerning a spiritual gift could lead some students to pursue training in ministry. For many or even most students, they can start to map out a mission where their interests, talents, and giftings come together into a clearer life plan. The aspiring architect can now see how their talent in physics intersects with their interest in design as well as their spiritual gifting of mercy. How these come together is very personal and unique to that person.

Whether a unit on spiritual gifts is explicitly connected to college guidance or not, teaching students about spiritual gifts can be a key moment in their growth as young Christians. During the high school years, most of these students will learn how to drive and work their first job. Shouldn’t we also hand them the keys to a deeper walk with Christ that gives them a start in how to practically live out their faith. Just like Timothy was entrusted with responsibility at a young age, we can likewise guide our students toward a mature faith.

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Of course, not all resolutions are created equal. There’s a resolution to get in shape by working out more, and then there are The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, full of profound thought and purposeful Christian spirituality. Are written goals and resolutions classical? Should personal goal setting be a deliberate feature in our educational programs? I believe the answer to both questions is yes. There is a rich classical tradition of personal goal setting, especially as it relates to virtue and habit development. Helping our students cast a positive vision for their own personal growth and detail the steps they can take toward their own development is a powerful and undervalued lever in the classical, Christian educator’s hands.

Classical Goal Setting

To demonstrate that resolutions and goal setting are classical, we need look no further than the Stoic philosophers. Their handbooks and meditations are full of the stuff of resolutions. Classical goal setting might be said to differ from many modern New Year’s resolutions in its overarching focus on character as the outcome rather than money, beauty or career. Living a good life, developing areté or virtue, and serving God and neighbor better should be the aim of a classical and Christian set of resolutions. This is in contrast to goals centered merely on increased discipline to promote personal fulfillment. 

At the same time, even goals with a narrow focus tend to work, or at least substantially increase the likelihood that a person will hit their goal. The reason why is articulated well by Aristotle. It is as simple and profound as saying that those who have a clear target are much more likely to hit it:

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object.

Aristotle, Ethics and Poetics (Veritas Press: 2019), 10 

Aristotle believes the chief good is eudaimonia, happiness or, we might say, personal fulfillment. We have already had occasion to modify Aristotle’s endorsement of happiness to suit the transcendent frame of a Christian worldview in the opening foray into a series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues (see “Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education”). We can merely note for our purposes here that Aristotle’s metaphor of archers having a goal or target is incredibly helpful. 

In life we all make choices. In fact, we all deliberate about what is good for ourselves. Having in mind the ultimate goal that we are aiming at will necessarily clarify the mechanics involved in taking a successful shot. Of course, here Aristotle is showing how our life is not an infinite regression of goods that are merely useful for some other good. Classical goal setting does not settle for the immediate desired end but pushes its participants to ask why. Why do you want to go to the gym? Why do you want to be more physically fit? Why do you want to have more energy and vibrancy as well as look better? For Aristotle, these questions lead up and out to his big picture vision of eudaimonia and the good life. 

This questioning and clarification process helps sort our immediate wants from bigger goals and our future vision. It also makes classical goal setting more effective, because in the process we are also sorting out our various priorities and connecting our short term goals and objectives to our ultimate telos and vision of human flourishing. The clarity achieved will then increase motivation to stick to a new habit or practice in spite of obstacles. If our goals are connected to a lesser vision, which, say, identifies human pleasure as the end-all-be-all, the misguided vision of happiness that Aristotle says most human beings operate with, then we will be easily led astray from our goal of regular exercise when the pain increases and the Siren song of some other pleasure is calling our name (read Educating for Self-Control, Part 1: A Lost Christian Virtue).

Modern Research on Goal Setting

Similarly modern research has shown that there are better and worse ways to set goals. Brian Johnson explains the importance of imagining both a positive future vision and the presence of obstacles to making that vision a reality. He draws from the research of Rick Snyder in his book The Psychology of Hope to detail the need for not only goals, but a sense of agency and multiple pathways (i.e. plans B, C, D, etc.) to get there (Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, Heroic Blackstone: 2023; 88-89). Genuine hope distinguishes itself from mere wish by involving both a sense that I can personally contribute in some way toward a better future and the realism that struggle, failure and the need to try-try-again will be part of that process.

Johnson also draws from the work of Gabriele Oettingen to much the same effect (90-91). In her book Rethinking Positive Thinking Oettingen uses the acronym WOOP to delineate the most effective set of steps to turn resolutions into reality: Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan. Each step should be written down and articulated. A wish for the future must be connected to the overall purpose or vision of the good life (think Aristotle’s eudaimonia). Obstacles must be anticipated with some plans or “implementation intentions” for how to deal with them. This process helps us stick to the vision when the rubber of good intentions meets the road of reality. 

Jordan Peterson, the now famous Canadian Psychologist and author of 12 Rules for Life, has independently worked out something similar in the form of his Future Authoring program:

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, decided to ask his students to sit down and write about their ideal future. They were asked to specifically describe the type of person they wanted to be, the skills they wanted to attain, and the relationships they wanted to have, among other things. (see Self Authoring – Future Authoring)

Notice that writing out the “ideal future” constitutes the major element in this process. From public lectures we know that Peterson’s Future Authoring program also involves imagining a negative picture as well of what the hellish version of the self would be if it went down a dark path instead. 

(Read Patrick’s series on Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: Rules for Schools?, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

In addition, like the work of Snyder and Oettingen, Peterson’s process also involves getting down into the nitty gritty of daily habits and potential obstacles. It also has the support of research studies to demonstrate its effectiveness (see Self Authoring – Research). For instance, a single intensive goal setting session significantly improved the GPA of undergraduate students who were struggling academically within a semester (see Hirsh and Peterson, “Setting, Elaborating, and Reflecting on Personal Goals Improves Academic Performance,” 260). The research is clear, despite the low success rate of New Year’s resolutions. Goal setting in a detailed way with written goals and articulated obstacles has been shown to be incredibly effective. 

Applying Goal Setting to Education

The study cited above makes the application of goal setting to education obvious in one sense. It can be used powerfully as an intervention for students who are struggling academically. This should not be overlooked in our K-12 classical Christian schools and homeschools. Too often we resort to lecturing a student about what they should do or not do in order to improve their academic performance. Part of why this does not work is because it doesn’t appropriately harness a student’s autonomy or will, in Charlotte Mason’s terms. 

Sometimes we are tempted to think of habit training as something we do to a student, rather than something we do with a student. But Charlotte Mason is clear that a student must own his or her own character development, otherwise it is a mere veneer: 

We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character…. What we do with the will we describe as voluntary. What we do without the conscious action of will is involuntary. The will has only one mode of action, its function is to ‘choose,’ and with every choice we make we grow in force of character. (vol. 6, p. 129)

A goal setting process allows an individual student to make their own assessment of their future vision, their obstacles, and the pathways forward. The student then choses to follow the positive goals that they set for themselves. The voluntary and personal nature of this process make it ideal for developing character. 

Now we must add in to this process the classical goal setting features we discussed before. We should direct them in their resolutions not just toward improving academic performance or an exercising habit but their ultimate purpose from a Christian perspective and how their immediate goals relate not only to their personal fulfillment but also to the glory of God and their salvation in Christ. Christian classical goal setting should not only WOOP (Wish-Outcome-Obstacles-Plan), it should do it Jonathan Edwards style. 

What does this look like in our education settings? The first and most obvious note is that a classical goal setting exercise should most likely not be an assignment with a grade. The tang of artificiality and forced reflection might undercut the autonomy and will of the student. It is important to have times and seasons set apart perhaps at the start of the year and the beginning of a new quarter or semester, or even a unit in a course, where students are given the opportunity to reflect in writing on their own learning and progress, as well as their ultimate goals and personal growth. I have conducted a writing session similar to the future authoring prompts for students during an Upper School student orientation time. Students were told that what they wrote would not be collected or graded and were encouraged to reflect seriously and purposefully on their own future vision of themselves and their goals for the year. 

In some classes and courses, specific virtues and vices can be used as prompts or options to articulate their own assessment of themselves. The classical and Christian content of history, literature and biblical texts can be helpfully applied in a meditation journal, where students regularly react personally to questions that ask them to apply the examples and thoughts of these subjects to themselves. Most of all, we can conclude that the development of character and specifically the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom hinge on these sorts of practices. Prudence involves a person deliberating about the real decisions they are making on a daily basis in light of a future vision of flourishing. Goal setting and resolutions are necessary part of that process. In order to turn out men and women of prudence we should carve out periodic class time for intentional reflection regarding personal development.

A series entitled “Counsels of the Wise” explores and applies the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (Greek: phronesis):

1. Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence
2. Counsels of the Wise, Part 2: Why Reviving Moral Philosophy Is Not Enough
3. Counsels of the Wise, Part 3: The Practical Nature of Prudence
4. Counsels of the Wise, Part 4: Preliminary Instruction in Prudence
5. Counsels of the Wise, Part 5: Principles and Practice, Examples and Discipline
6. Counsels of the Wise, Part 6: A Pedagogy of Prudence
7. Counsels of the Wise, Part 7: Leadership, Liberal Arts, and Prudence
8. Counsels of the Wise, Part 8: Aiming at the Intermediate or Aristotle’s Moral Virtues

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In the previous article in this two-part review of Jonathan Pennington’s book Jesus the Great Philosopher, I spelled out the first two sections of his book dealing with the ancient philosophers (chapters 1 and 2) and then the Old and New Testaments (chapters 3 and 4). Here I will dive into the final three sections on emotions, relationships and the flourishing life. In each of these sections, Pennington provides insights that help us understand better the nature of our roles as teachers to educate formationally the students given into our care.

The thesis that emerges through my review is a sense that we are apprenticing students in the craft of living flourishing lives. There are so many points of connection between what Pennington has written and our educational renewal movement. Even though he didn’t write this book solely with our context in mind, it resonates so much that I highly recommend this as one of your must reads in the coming year.

Training the Emotions

It is difficult to get a handle on our emotional lives. Think about how true this is in your own life as a teacher. The vicissitudes of the school day and the school year impact us at an emotional level constantly. If this is true in our own lives, how much more do our students feel a range of different emotions? And yet we rarely consider how much emotional training is part of our job as educators. Pennington does a great job laying out a sophisticated view of emotions from a Christian philosophical perspective.

To begin with, the philosophical discussion surrounding emotions goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato and Aristotle had significantly different views on our emotions. Plato “saw emotions (or passions) as impulses that come upon us as an uncontrollable force.” (86) His noncognitive understanding of emotions weaves its way through history down to our modern era of chemical and neurological research. Pennington writes, “Even if one doesn’t take an entirely chemical approach to emotions, today emotions are largely viewed as negative and the enemy of sound thinking.” (88) Aristotle saw things very differently, taking an “integrated, cognitive approach.” (89) Our whole being works together. “We feel emotion in our bodies and souls through cognition, through using our minds in dialogue with our bodies.” (89) Now obviously the chemical and neurological insights gained by modern research has contributed to our understanding of numerous factors contributing to both emotions and cognition. But Pennington correctly draws forward and understanding of emotions as something that can be educated. There is a certain amount of control we have over our emotions. Our emotions can be trained.

To what end, though, are we training our emotions? Is it to gain complete detachment from emotional response as modern Stoic philosophy would have it? Emotions or feelings are actually necessary for navigating life successfully, so the kind of training envisioned is not to root out emotions but to feel with understanding. Pennington writes:

“Philosophical reflection and psychological research have also shown that emotions are central to aspects of our lives that we may not immediately recognize – specifically, our ethics and morality. . . . To state it most clearly: Emotions are central to our morality (1) in enabling us to determine what is right and wrong, and (2) as indicators of our moral character. Therefore, paying attention to and educating our emotions is crucial to the Good Life.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 95

Our development as integrated beings means bringing together our feeling self, our thinking self and our acting self (emotions, reason and behavior). Pennington posits that Christianity takes a cognitive approach to emotions similar to the Aristotelian tradition. Emotions are fundamentally good in part because they reflect the nature of God who has emotions and is entirely good. (105) As Christians we are called to control our emotions, not simply detach from them. “While promoting the good of emotions, Christianity also recommends a measured and intentional detachment from the world and its circumstances for the sake of living a tranquil life.” (114)

So how does one go about educating the emotions? One of the keys highlighted by Pennington is “the habit of intentional reflection.” (123) He demonstrates through readings in Deuteronomy, the Psalms and Matthew that “This habit of intentional reflection has a shaping effect on the belief, faithfulness, obedience, and thereby emotional health of the Israelites.” (124) Christian virtue, then, relies on training in specific habits to shape our emotional response to God leading toward true happiness.

Training New Citizens

The philosophy of the Good Life involves not only a coherence of one’s own integrated self, but a coherence of relationships with others. The next section in Pennington’s book delves into relationships and once again synthesizes ancient wisdom with the teachings of the Bible. Relationships are a central teaching in the philosophical tradition. (135) Philosphers like Plutarch, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero all see how marriage and families are the bedrock of a good society. Thus for the society as a whole to be well ordered, “the household was to be ordered well.” (139) So as we consider the philosophical tradition as it teaches about relationships, we can see that relationships span the most intimate and the most global arrangements.

Aristotle once again takes center stage. Pennington writes, “Aristotle argues that the end goal of enabling virtuous citizens to flourish must be the evaluative tool for determining which form of government is best.” (143) From this we can gather that the individual and the many live in a dynamic relationship that ought to aim at a singular goal: “the flourishing of virtuous individuals.” This is a challenging proposition in a society that desires individual autonomy while it remains confused about moral virtue. I think this is where classical Christian education can best serve society by training new citizens to understand what it means to live virtuously as individuals and to engage in public discourse about how to promote the wellbeing of all in light of what it means to be a good person.

The Bible provides a nuanced perspective, however, on what it means to be a citizen. “Jesus’s life and teaching can fairly be described as a re-forming and renewing of all kinds of relationships – between God and humanity and between humans of every language, ethnicity, gender, and class.” (156) The revelation of God’s divine Word breaks down our understanding of such things as family, friendship and society, and build them up into a new kind of structure centered on Christ Jesus. I think Pennington is most helpful in laying out the fact that the Bible is thoroughly political. What he means by this is that it expresses several nuanced points about a philosophy of politics. For instance, “Christians must understand that they are now citizens of two reams, or two cities, as Augustine would famously describe it – the city of humanity and the city of God.” (166) Our first loyalty is to our citizenship above. We pray fervently that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yet, these two realms exist in conflict. As citizens of an earthly realm, we prioritize our heavenly citizenship while also participating in the betterment of our earthly society. “Therefore, the Christian’s relationship to the state is one of respectful participation and honor where honor is due (1 Pet. 2:17), praying for even ungodly leaders (1 Tim. 2:1-4).” (166) Our civic duty is real and earnest because we are emissaries of our Lord Jesus Christ and carry the diplomatic message of the good news of the gospel.

Training up new citizens is a difficult task. Even though our present state of cultural discourse feels overwhelming and dysfunctional, I am certain that this feeling is not unique to our day. As educators, our task is not to teach a number of talking points from whatever political party our constituents agree with. Instead, we are to help our students understand their dual citizenship, learning to walk as Christ walked and working toward the transformation of society in light of the gospel. Pennington puts it well:

“Jesus and the New Testament regularly paint a picture of what the true politeia modeled on God’s kingdom should be. Christian teaching is a vision that resocializes people’s values and habits, that creates a new community of people, a new covenant people who will live together in love and serve as a model for the world of God himself. This is a sophisticated philosophy of relationships.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 171

Training in Happiness

One of the claims I persistently make that differentiates our educational renewal movement from conventional education is that we train up students to live lives of meaning and purpose. The factory model of education focuses on technology and techniques that provide for better jobs with the assumption that a highly trained workforce is the chief end of society. But as classical Christian educators, we have a higher vision that transcends career. We believe that educating the whole person entails addressing life’s biggest questions and launching our students into a pursuit of true happiness.

Pennington closes his book with two chapters that align with what makes our movement unique. He demonstrates that “happiness and meaningfulness entail each other” (189) by reviewing ancient and modern philosophers. Our modern world with its largely scientific worldview struggles to provide the kind of comprehensive view of life that produces meaning and purpose. This is why we benefit so much from going back to the great philosophers of the ancient world. They “all pondered the great questions of happiness and offered practical, real-life wisdom on how to live well.” (191) The antidote to our modern malaise comes through intentional reflection on the big questions of life. He writes in summary of the ancient wisdom:

“So they disagreed on lots of habits and beliefs, but they all shared this central idea: We long for flourishing, and the only way to find it is through living intentionally and thoughtfully in particular ways. Neither virtue nor its eventual fruit, happiness, come to us accidentally.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 193

The ancient wisdom stands in stark relief with what we might call the self-help industry. We have modern YouTube gurus offering tips and tricks to live better lives. In certain cases, really thoughtful programs synthesize philosophical sophistication with modern science, attempting a nonreligious, “whole-life philosophy of happiness.” (200) But “the gurus that people look to today offer only a limited kind of happiness.” (200) It seems to me that our society reflects the educational norms of conventional education: technology and techniques have soft pedaled a less-than-satisfying philosophy of life.

Pennington’s final chapter masterfully explores Christianity as a superior life philosophy full of meaning that promotes flourishing. He writes, “Jesus in the actual Logos – the organizing principle of the world, the agent of creation, the being that holds the whole universe together – this means that his philosophy alone is whole, complete, and truly true.” (201) Two key words stand out in Pennington’s exposition of Christian philosophy: grace and hope. Despite the fall and despite the limitations we face as human beings, God’s grace is poured out on humanity in the form of wisdom. We are recipients of divine wisdom: not only what we might call special revelation, but the wisdom that permeates all creation. “Any wisdom in the world is from God who created all.” (203) Together God’s creation and God’s Word provide answers to life’s greatest questions. This is grace.

Hope is perhaps the single greatest factor when comparing the self-help philosophy of today with the whole-life philosophy of the Bible. Pennington writes:

“The Christian hope is that God is going to return to restore the world to right, to bring light into darkness, to create a new creation of shalom and peace, to be present fact-to-face with his creatures. It is this hope alone that can bridge the eudaimonia gap between our experience now and our deepest longings.” (216)

To understand what he means here, it is helpful to consider the eudaimonia gap. All humans desire to experience happiness or eudaimonia. However, we face a world of suffering, whether it be physical, mental, relational or otherwise. The gap we experience between the happiness we want to achieve and the reality of the obstacles that interfere with us experiencing that happiness is what we might call the eudaimonia gap. Christianity offers a satisfying solution by presenting us with a future hope. “Christian philosophy emphasizes precisely this – an honest assessment of the brokenness of life that is always oriented toward a sure hope for God’s restoration of true flourishing to the world.” (218) Christian hope is not a detachment from the problems in our world nor does it trivialize suffering. Instead, Christian hope finds profound meaning in this life through the recognition that suffering and pain are where God meets us as he leads us toward eudaimonia.

This review of Pennington’s book Jesus the Great Philosopher has hopefully stimulated your thoughts on what it means to be a classical Christian educator. A book like this helps contextualize daily classroom life with the long view of living the Good Life. In the liberal arts tradition, discrete subjects (if that is even the correct word) cohere around philosophy. So when we are teaching mathematics, literature or science, we should have in view that the subject matter is not limited to one domain of knowledge. Education is a science of relations, as Charlotte Mason has so famously put it. Pennington’s book serves as a convenient and accessible manual for bringing into conversation the liberal arts and a biblical worldview. I highly recommend you reading this for yourself to be inspired as a classical Christian educator.

Beyond this, I could see this book being adopted in a theology or humanities class at your school. The way he brings the many streams of wisdom together will benefit students who have had many years of tutelage under the writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Lewis and many others. Even if you don’t bring this into your curriculum, I could see this being a great read in a book club, contributing to lively discussion and thoughtful interaction.

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Mentoring as a Program

When we think of mentoring programs, we often picture something like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), a non-profit organization that pairs adult volunteers with youth. Para-educational programs such as this have been the focus on numerous studies conducted over decades and show various results. For instance, the 2011 study published in the journal Child Development found mixed results in the BBBSA program.[1] Students tended to improve academically, and yet these improvements were limited with students not sustaining higher academic performance after the first year of mentorship. Mentoring programs like this also tended to have little impact on behavioral issues.

Another study aggregated over 5000 mentoring programs in a meta-analysis of over 73 studies on mentoring programs directed at children during the decade 1999-2010. The study, published in 2011 in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, found that mentored youth exhibited positive outcomes whereas non-mentored youth showed declines in outcomes.[2] This seems reasonable enough and is what we might expect. When non-parental adults invest in youth, that investment predominantly yields positive returns in the life of the child. We can conclude that mentorship of youth, even if it results in modest social, emotional and intellectual gains, is superior to the alternative: leaving children to their own devices.

As I think about mentoring programs, much of the emphasis found in modern studies of mentorship focus on para-educational programs. But mentorship does not depend on an outside organization, it can happen within a school by training teachers who help establish an atmosphere of learning. The implementation of mentorship within a school utilizing teachers strikes me as a way to leverage the benefits of mentoring without the encumbrance of an outside organization. The idea here is that if teachers are the mentors, we create a culture of mentorship that leverages the relationship between student and teacher.

On Permissiveness and Micro-managing

So what is the opposite of an atmosphere of mentorship? It strikes me that there are two opposite kinds of atmospheres. One atmosphere that is easy to create is one of permissiveness or a laissez faire approach to the care of students. When a school is oriented solely toward the delivery of course content, the teachers are not inclined to reach students in the hallways, playground or cafeteria. The permissive approach is a justifiably rational approach. For one, the faculty already devote so much time to planning, teaching and grading, that it feels a burden to have them spend more contact hours with students. This approach has also been justified on the rationale that if students are going to leave for college and have an abundance of independence and self-direction, shouldn’t they be given lots of freedom now in order to succeed at the next level. In this way of thinking, only students who are struggling academically or morally receive interventions, whereas the rest are left to their own devices.

While there are many studies on mentorship programs, there are very few studies on permissive environments. The difficulty is that permissiveness in the school environment has to be evaluated through self-report. For instance, one study examined students in government schools in Faridabad, India.[3] Schools were deemed to be permissive based on the self-reports of students. With a study comprised of 400 students, the conclusions must be taken cautiously. But the findings of the study showed that there is a significant correlation between permissiveness in the school environment and underachievement in the field of science. As I read this albeit limited study in a field that rarely gets analyzed, it seems that the strategy to bolster science achievement by allowing students to follow their desires has not been corroborated by this evidence. When it comes to achievement in academic subjects as well as social and moral domains, mentoring seems to be the better strategy to foster success.

A very different environment seeks to root out any deviancy or failure by micro-managing students. Rules and procedures are carried out with exacting regularity. It’s possible to get high performance in this situation, but it is equally difficult to have a deep and lasting impact in the hearts and minds of students. As much as we would want to shield students from deviancy or failure, we must understand the child as a whole person who has an independent and autonomous will. The best conditions for learning occur in an atmosphere where failure or error are met with grace. Often times it is failure and error that provide the most productive avenues for growth. An atmosphere that helps students learn how to learn is essential. You can read more about the concept of ratio in Kolby’s series on Teach Like a Champion.

I really like how Jason put it during our podcast, the optimal learning atmosphere occurs in the “moral and authoritative presence of a caring, thoughtful and wise adult.” (Episode 10, 39:58). So, what we are suggesting here is that mentoring is the golden mean between a laissez faire approach to school atmosphere and a strict, rules-based approach to atmosphere. When we place students under the masterful care of adults who are well trained to mentor and disciple their students, the opportunity for success in multiple domains of life is promoted.

Mentoring and Habit Training

As we think about establishing an atmosphere conducive to mentorship, it is helpful to turn to the concept of habit training. The method that Charlotte Mason spells out provides good avenues for mentorship to occur. In her Towards a Philosophy of Education she writes:

“There is no other way of forming any good habit, though the discipline is usually that of the internal government which the person exercises upon himself; but a certain strenuousness in the formation of good habits is necessary because every such habit is the result of conflict. The bad habit of the easy life is always pleasant and persuasive and to be resisted with pain and effort, but with hope and certainty of success, because in our very structure is the preparation for forming such habits of muscle and mind as we deliberately propose to ourselves.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, 101-102

From this we learn that mentorship invites a certain kind of conflict. The child becomes internally conflicted in a battle of will. The good habit will only be established through self-discipline all the while the bad habit offers all the allurements of pleasure. Mentorship offers support to the child by providing strength to the child’s will to fight the good fight. Mason continues:

“We entertain the idea which gives birth to the act and the act repeated again and again becomes the habit; ‘Sow an act,’ we are told, ‘reap a habit.’ ‘Sow a habit, reap a character.’”

Philosophy of Education, 102

An atmosphere of mentorship has in view the moral and spiritual formation of the child. And this occurs through the steady and regular influence of teachers who themselves have godly character and the mindset to disciple the children given into their care. Mason goes on:

“But we must go a step further back, we must sow the idea or notion which makes the act worthwhile. The lazy boy who hears of the Great Duke’s narrow camp bed, preferred by him because when he wanted to turn over it was time to get up, receives the idea of prompt rising. But his nurse or his mother knows how often and how ingeniously the tale must be brought to his mind before the habit of prompt rising is formed; she knows too how the idea of self-conquest must be made at home in the boy’s mind until it become a chivalric impulse which he cannot resist. It is possible to sow a great idea lightly and casually and perhaps this sort of sowing should be rare and casual because if a child detect a definite purpose in his mentor he is apt to stiffen himself against it.”

Philosophy of Education, 102

Habit training begins with inspiring ideas and helping the child gain a vision of themselves as mature human beings. Mason cautions against habit training or mentoring originating on the basis of the convenience or manipulation of the teacher or parent. A child can sense this and will stiffen against it. Along these lines, Mason concludes her thoughts by cautioning teachers against permissiveness:

“When parent or teacher supposes that a good habit is a matter of obedience to his authority, he relaxes a little. A boy is late who has been making evident efforts to be punctual; the teacher good-naturedly foregoes rebuke or penalty, and the boy says to himself,––‘It doesn’t matter,’ and begins to form the unpunctual habit. The mistake the teacher makes is to suppose that to be punctual is troublesome to the boy, so he will let him off; whereas the office of the habits of an ordered life is to make such life easy and spontaneous; the effort is confined to the first half dozen or score of occasions for doing the thing.”

Philosophy of Education, 102-103

My hunch is that permissive environments occur when we grown ups feel uncomfortable with the authority we have. When we are at peace with our authoritative role, however, we can mentor children because we can see how we have been placed in this child’s life to help support his or her betterment. The best part of the child wants to be punctual, and we are here to support that. Permissiveness comes in when we shy away from supporting the child due to our own fear of manipulation or a sense that by challenging the child we are somehow not loving the child.

Train Up a Child

Raising children today is no easy task. Mainstream culture is a factor we all have to deal with, and good parents and teacher will come to different decisions about how much exposure to the artifacts of culture (television, movies, music, social media) to let into the home or classroom. Proverbs 22:6 advises parents to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” A well-trained child is one who knows the right way to go. The path of life is laid out before them, and they stay the course. I am reminded of the quote by Miyamoto Musashi, “If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.” True mentorship of children and youth provides them with insights about the nature of life and how to live a life with meaning and purpose.

As we train up children, we must have a genuine picture of what it means to live life. Because life is full of adversity, pain, suffering, challenge and failure, it is important to prepare children to meet these on the battlefield of life. In addressing the nature of life in this way, the value of genuine happiness, true friendship and the strength of conviction are magnified. We need to be careful not to shelter children from the challenges of life. Instead, we should walk alongside them to so that they can meet the challenges they face with grace and dignity. I want to highlight a great insight Jason shared in our podcast on atmosphere. He says,

 “Many of us unfortunately, and for understandable reasons, have the sheltering issue completely backwards we have flipped it on its head. We’re sheltering them from the wrong things so that they won’t have to face the pain and suffering and challenge of the world but can have things handed to them and life just smoothed and eased for them. But we are not willing anymore to shelter them from the bad moral and spiritual influences in their lives, which is exactly what we should be sheltering them from until they’ve got the training and are standing on their own two feet as mature Christians. I think the idea that we would send out our children to be missionaries in public schools, that’s not how the New Testament, as I read it, thinks about missionaries. You send your solid, spirit-empowered, well-trained and discipled apostles out to be missionaries to the world and to proclaim the gospel to them. You don’t send weak, frail, young-in-the-faith children out to be gobbled up by a world that is completely contrary to where they are coming from.”

Educational Renaissance Podcast, Episode 10 – “Atmosphere,” 46:14

The impulse to shelter our children from pain, suffering and challenge is understandable. We want what is best for our children. But it is far better to train children to be strong to meet life’s challenges rather than keep them safe from them, or to exist in ignorance of the many challenges that surround them.

As I mentioned above, we want children to encounter genuine life, which means they must experience pain, suffering and challenge. C. S. Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain reasons, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.” From this idea I would advise educators to consider the following two ideas. First, we as teachers must be people who are experienced at encountering life in its manifold nature – full of pain, yes, but also full of deep and profound joy. It is really only from this position of genuine living that we can hope to mentor the young ones given into our care. I am not saying that we share every struggle and burden with them, quite the opposite. What I am saying is that as mentors, there is a mantle of genuineness that becomes part of the learning atmosphere when we have partaken in real life. In a word, we must be mature. Second, we as teachers must be prepared to seize the opportunities that present themselves regularly to meet our students at the moment of challenge or pain to support them. We cannot shelter them from all challenge and pain. So we must therefore help them to encounter challenge with courage and perseverance.

May the Lord uphold you in this high calling. And may you take deep and profound joy in this work.

[1] Herrera, Carla; Jean Grossmen; Tina Kauh; Jennifer McMaken. “Mentoring in Schools: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters School Based Mentoring.” Child Development 82 (1): 346–381.

[2] DuBois, David L., Nelson Portillo, Jean E. Rhodes, Naida Silverthorn, Jeffrey C. Valentine. “How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (2011): 57-91.

[3] Kapri, Umesh C. “A Study of Underachievement in Science in Relation to Permissive School Environment.” International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology 4 (2017): 2027-2032.

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At Clapham School, where I serve as an administrator, we were able to hold a small, in-person ceremony for our graduates. As I composed my commencement address, I was struck by parallels with the class of 1919, which had graduation ceremonies cancelled or postponed in various locations due to the Spanish Influenza pandemic. In this message, I try to bring perspective to graduates this summer, that the challenges we face due to Covid-19 may go a long way toward shaping the outlook of this next generation, if one embraces the opportunity a catastrophe provides. In many ways, this speech is a sequel to my article on the Black Death in the 14th century.

Here I’ve shared my commencement address in the hope that perhaps this message will be meaningful to you as a teacher and leader in your school.

Commencement Address – Class of 2020

Good evening, class of 2020. I am so grateful that we can meet this evening with a small gathering of parents, siblings, teachers, relatives and friends. Little about the past several months has gone according to plan, so it is that much more satisfying to have planned this event, bringing a little order in the midst of chaos.

The “Greatest Generation” is a term used to describe the Americans who experienced both the Great Depression and World War 2. What characterizes these Americans is that they lived through some of the greatest hardships of the depression and exhibited the will to win on the battlefields of Africa, Europe and Asia. Of the 16 million who served in WW2, only about half a million remain today.

When we look back on the Greatest Generation, we can observe that such a generation is forged by the harshest of trials. You can’t engineer such a generation. There’s no recipe or lab manual. There were attempts to create great generations. Warren G. Harding called for a return to normalcy in 1920, a phrase that anticipated “Make America Great Again.” What is normalcy? And can normalcy be created through public policy?

The post-war 1950s represented another attempt at social fabrication of a great generation. The idea was social conformity. The picture of suburban docility was promoted on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post with weekly prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. What, though, are we striving for when we call for conformity? Can social pressure create a great generation? This is a highly relevant consideration in light of the dominant position social media has taken since the early 2000s.

My thesis, and the point that I want to make for our graduating seniors, is that great generations are forged through unexpected hardship, and cannot be made by the will of cultural engineers. And what has 2020 been, but a year of hardship after hardship. This pandemic gives me pause to ask whether we are experiencing the kinds of conditions that will contribute to the making of a new great generation. To assess this hunch of mine, I want to take us back to 1918 and 1919.

The Great War, or WW1, was drawing to a close after years of stagnation. The US was ultimately drawn into the conflict as the decisive force, bringing victory to the allied forces against the central powers. One of the unexpected consequences of American soldiers serving overseas was that they brought back the Spanish Influenza, which hit pandemic levels in the fall of 1918. Schools closed in September and October of 1918. Homecoming events, a fairly new annual celebration in the early 1900s, were cancelled that fall. We can empathize with some of the experiences from that pandemic that swept the nation. For instance, students in Los Angeles remained at home and were sent assignments by teachers through mail-in correspondence.

There were subsequent spikes of the Spanish Influenza in January of 1919 and then again in the April-May timeframe later that year. This meant that graduations were cancelled or delayed in various hotspots throughout America. The class of 2020 seems to have similarities with the class of 1919. There were no vaccines or treatments available, so the only protocols to follow were isolation, quarantine, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, and canceling or limiting public gatherings. If nothing else, it’s good to know we are not alone. Mark Twain is reputed to have said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Well, sometimes it sure seems like it does repeat itself.

For reasons we don’t particularly know, the Spanish Influenza just went away. It took researchers until 2008 to fully understand the genetic makeup of the H1N1 virus, colloquially termed the Spanish Flu. Side note: the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. Spain became associated with this virus simply because they remained neutral in WW1, and were therefore able to provide unbiased reporting about this new virus during the war, a service which ultimately associated their national identity with a virus. The Spanish, by the way, referred to the virus as the French Flu.

The parallels between the Spanish Flu and the Coronavirus interest me for this simple reason. The Spanish Flu is something we can regard as the first in a series of hardships that impacted the generation who would subsequently experience both the Great Depression and WW2. Yet, few ever associate that pandemic with the ensuing events. But could it be that the Influenza pandemic served as an initial crisis in a string of events creating the greatest generation?

And so I ask you now, our graduates, a compelling question. Will our pandemic serve as an initial crisis that will forge the next greatest generation? I don’t know what the future will hold. I can’t promise you that depressions and world wars will further galvanize your generation. But perhaps if the mantle is born with only this one catastrophic event, the work of making a next great generation is accomplished here and now.

The temptation will exist to dive deeply into social distractions. We could be on the verge of the next roaring 20s. But I trust that the books that you’ve read here at Clapham, the discussions about what it takes to live life with meaning and purpose, will have prepared you to fully embrace the opportunity now made available to you in our current traumatic experiences.

Let me be clear about my charge to you. I do not spell these things out to you to place a burden of expectations on you. It matters not whether you become labelled a great generation. Instead, what does matter is to notice that your class has had a bit of rubbish luck when it comes to your graduation. And I say, good for you! That’s now part of your story. That’s something that becomes part of your perspective on life. That’s something that marks your graduation as something unique and special. And if you can own that and truly embrace it, you will find joy and blessing.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

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One of my favorite podcasters, Brian Johnson who put out a great series of YouTube videos called Philosophers Notes, had this tagline on his podcasts: “Isn’t it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live?” This idea always resonated with me, not because we need an extra class on living, but because the idea of how to live should be resonating throughout all of our classes. Educators have often missed the fact that math, science and history are to be learned in order to know how to live. If math, science and history don’t seem like subjects where you would learn how to live, then you’re probably like me, having been raised in a system of education more focused on functional outcomes (getting into the best colleges or getting into the best careers) than on living meaningful and purposeful lives. 

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The dominant mode of education, the one we see in mass media, is all about the systematic approach — a conveyor belt of educational product. But consider my geometry class. The major goal of the class is to see our world differently, especially those parts of our world that appear most obvious. Why ought we to do proofs? Why transform polygons? Why inscribe triangles within circles? To help us to grapple with the world around us in fascinating new ways. We live in a three-dimensional world that is often depicted in two dimensions. Let’s get to the bottom of that. And in so doing gain insight into what it means to live in this space. Now you kinda want to take geometry again, don’t you?

In this article I want to go beyond just academic subjects and consider the entire enterprise of education as it pertains to life. There are many dimensions to this, so I don’t expect I will fully extract every morsel in this essay, but hopefully it will provide you with some suggestive avenues to stimulate your own thinking about life. Additionally, I would like to relate these thoughts to our current response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

(One more thing, before diving in. A justification of a seemingly inadequate title. You might think that I’m missing an indefinite article, since you know my heartfelt devotion to Charlotte Mason. Yes, she states, “Education is a life,” and by that she means that the child’s mind is fed on living ideas. I’m extrapolating that idea to demonstrate that there is another level of understanding Mason’s claim. Furthermore, you will notice the preposition “on” instead of “of.” Many teachers are asked to express their philosophy of education, in which they will describe their teaching techniques and practices, sometimes elaborating on their view of the child as a whole person. What I am doing here is not really a philosophy of education in that sense. I am instead thinking about education as a whole and its place in life. Maybe the preposition “on” will rattle a few feathers. Thus ends the deconstruction of an inadequate title.)

Two Forces: Achievement or Inspiration

To begin with, I think it is important to make a distinction between two competing forces in education. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do exist in tension with one another. The first force is what we might call achievement. Students, parents and teachers want what’s best for their child, and this often gets translated into measurable categories. The grade in a class is a measure of the student’s achievement. The class rank, SAT score, National Merit selection index number and a plethora of other measurements let everyone know how this particular student stacks up against all others. It’s actually really valuable to incorporate measurement in education, but it’s really difficult to measure what really matters.

I’ve written elsewhere that most of our educational measurements select only a few areas of learning and growth, solely because they are easy to measure. Unfortunately, much of what we measure has little value in predicting future success. Our tools simply cannot measure determination, the ability to hold pleasant conversation, kindness toward others, piety, resilience, or delayed gratification. So we need this first force — achievement — but it is a force fraught with fallacies.

The second force I will call inspiration. My hunch is that most teachers go into education because they want to inspire students to love subjects they themselves love. Most teachers look back at their own education and can point to a few teachers that inspired them. They want to make a difference in the lives of their own students. Unfortunately, there are far too few teachers who retain this high level of inspiration for the entirety of their career. Teaching is a demanding job, calling for long hours preparing lessons, learning technology, sitting in staff meetings, and grading homework. Teachers who truly want to inspire students find the nature of their work rather intense, because it means you need to bring massive energy to every lesson, you have to work with struggling students, you need to motivate fringe students, you need to coach and counsel both students and parents, and sometimes you need to flex your schedule to reach those students who need extra help. The first force – achievement – can also steal from the second force. The most inspirational teacher can get caught up in tracking the measurements, not only as a way of looking at her students’ success but also to measure her own success. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t be graduating a group of fantastically inspired students who are complete and utter failures. We need achievement. But we also need inspiration. Both forces are necessary. If I’m honest with myself, though, I greatly lean toward the force of inspiration, sometimes wishing the other force could go away. 

These thoughts on two forces have lived with me for quite some time. So when I came across this quote by Charlotte Mason, I felt it was time to really wrestle with it philosophically for a while.

“It seems to me that education, which appeals to the desire for wealth (marks, prizes, scholarships, or the like), or to the desire of excelling (as in the taking of places, etc.), or to any other of the natural desires, except that for knowledge, destroys the balance of character; and, what is even more fatal, destroys by inanition that desire for and delight in knowledge which is meant for our joy and enrichment through the whole of life.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, pg. 226

The strength of Mason’s feelings is matched by the power of her vocabulary. The character of learners is “destroyed” when education becomes focused on the desire for wealth or success. The only sure educational desire is for knowledge. She calls it fatal to base education on anything else. The word “inanition” means that a thing is emptied of all of its nourishing content. Take your bleached grains, your generic white bread, with its crusts cut off, and try living off just that. That’s the picture Mason paints for education when the focus is shifted away from the life-giving enrichment of knowledge. I would guess that Mason sides more with the force of inspiration than the force of achievement, too.

Mason, however, was very much aware of the force of achievement, and most definitely saw that a good education entailed success at such things as examinations (Vol. 3, pg. 301). So we can’t minimize the role achievement plays in education. There remain standards that must be met in order to be considered a well-educated person. But Mason also recognizes that our standards ought to be measured against what truly matters in life.

“But the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character; and character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of will. We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 129

Achievement, then, is not only necessary, it is of fundamental importance. It is actually the goal toward which inspiration aims. The two forces that tug at each other actually cohere elegantly when put together properly. If our aim is on top marks, a 4.0 GPA, college entrance, merit-based scholarships, and the like, our aim isn’t truly aligned. What Mason is articulating is that true achievement is a life so well lived that the world is made a better place. This life of great value is achieved through character. Here is achievement that is truly inspirational.

The Classroom is a Microcosm of Life 

The vision of a life well lived is our ultimate goal of achievement. But that vision seems so far off that it feels impractical on a daily basis. Time presses upon us each day holding in our faces the immediacy of the lesson at hand, the upcoming assessment, or the report card soon to be released. Achievement snaps into focus, pushing inspiration out of the picture.

We need to start viewing the classroom differently. The classroom is the place where life occurs. The temptation is to think about life as truly occurring outside the classroom. Students feel this way, since home is where they most often eat, rest and play. Their youth group, sports team or the Starbucks where they hang out with their friends feels more like the locus where life occurs than the classroom does. School is where they have to go to do the work that’s required of them. How often do we get sucked into that way of thinking as well? But life occurs in the classroom all the same, even if students don’t place the greatest importance on that aspect of their life. To be clear, I don’t think one can say one sphere of life is more or less important than others. Our existence as living beings transcends time and space, and we are unified beings no matter what space we inhabit. To view ourselves as more alive in one place than in others begins to disintegrate the coherence of our being. In light of this, we must strive to breathe genuine life into the atmosphere of our classrooms, lest we cause real harm to ourselves and others.

So what does it mean when I say life occurs in our classrooms? For one, it means that our students are whole persons. We are not just interacting with our students’ minds. Students are also emotional, social and spiritual creatures, just like we are. All dimensions of their personhood come into the classroom. All dimensions of their personhood are being trained and cultivated. This means that teaching that doesn’t connect to their multi-dimensionality will actually not get assimilated because it isn’t fundamentally important to their existence as living beings.

But wait, you might say, aren’t there things you just have to learn, even if there isn’t an emotional, social or spiritual connection? Let’s consider a recent geometry lesson. We are just starting to learn trigonometric functions. This is hard stuff when it’s brand new. I could see the look of frustration on their faces. Lurking in the background is a feeling that if this doesn’t relate to real life in some way, what’s the use of putting in the effort to figure out when, how and why to use inverse sine? In this very moment, though, real life is happening before our very eyes.

What I did was take a step back from the lesson about the law of sines, to help them grapple with their encounter with things that are difficult to learn. “You are feeling the fog right now, aren’t you?” I helped them to see that some things we learn aren’t fully clear at the outset. This might have been true when they first learned long division in early grammar school. This might have been true when they learned factoring in algebra 1. I was connecting them to their emotional state. “Hey, we’re all experiencing this together.” It is very common for us to feel that we are the only one who doesn’t get it. But when there’s a recognition that we are doing something together, a deep bond is formed. The “ah-ha” moments become a group celebration. Learning is a social and relational thing. I was connecting them to their social state. “This seems pretty out there, doesn’t it?” The deeper you go in mathematics, the more abstract and esoteric things become. In this moment, I was showing them that they were exploring something almost mystical. I could relate this to something as practical as navigating an airplane. But the practical application will actually compound their frustration in the moment. Instead, I helped them to see how their imaginations were gaining new tools. I was connecting them to their spiritual state. Real life was occurring in a specific learning environment. The temptation was to think in terms of achievement. “We’re not getting it. Our grades will suffer. I won’t go to the best school. I won’t get a good job. I’ll likely be homeless for the rest of my life!” Instead, we thought in terms of life and saw geometry as a field of endeavor in which we can gain an understanding of meaning and purpose. (I might add that these students have done well using trigonometric functions. As an experienced teacher I knew the fog would dissipate through more practice.)

What does this mean for you as a teacher? We must become observers of life. We only get a relatively small amount of time with the students God gives into our care. By being watchful for real life occurring in our midst, we position ourselves to seize every moment we can. The little arguments that erupt between students, the games that are played on the blacktop, the struggles to learn new concepts, the disorganized backpack. All things are avenues into genuine life connections.

Application of Education is Life to COVID-19

If we agree that education is about life, then this COVID-19 epidemic presents a huge teaching and learning opportunity. We are confronted with the frailty of our humanity. A few weeks ago I compared our present epidemic with the black plague in the mid-1300s. A confrontation with death and our own mortality is not a topic we should shy away from. We ourselves as teachers might be wrestling with new emotions and concerns about safety. We must also assume our students are wrestling with the reality and implications of COVID-19. Their world just got turned upside down.

Because one of the forces of education is inspiration, I think now is the time to inspire our students with a deep and profound vision of what life really means. There are some students who miss their interactions with friends through daily contact. Students presently feel a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. Many students miss the life-structuring order of our daily schedules. We can share with them how all of these feelings point to their yearning for meaning and purpose in their lives. Our texts and discussions can take on new importance if we are forthright in our response to the impact of COVID-19 on them and us right now. You may have a chance to model for them how your faith is upholding you in this moment, or what practices you’ve incorporated during this time of social distancing.

As an example, I teach a health class for sophomores and juniors. We spent time this week talking about meditation and mindfulness as a Christian practice. When I planned this unit, coronavirus was not in my thinking. Now that we’ve gotten to this unit, I opened up about how just a few minutes of quiet meditation in the morning helps me to calmly approach my day. I contrasted this to mornings when I opened up a news feed and saw how many new cases and deaths there were. They were able to see how I was responding to COVID-19, and then I asked them to share their own responses to the epidemic. We explored how stress can impact our health and well-being.

Clearly there are boundaries that we need. I am always careful not to make a class about me, my feelings or my viewpoint on current matters. I am also careful not to traumatize my students by forcing them to talk about raw feelings or controversial matters. Yet we should be open to teachable moments when we can provide insight through our transparency. We should equally be open to discussing matters that are hyper-present in their minds. How odd it would be for a teacher not to mention COVID-19 or social distancing.

Application of Education is Life to Online Learning

Speaking of social distancing, online learning has meant that we are all accumulating new technological skills. You are using student management software in new ways, or you are becoming masters of Zoom or Skype, or you are learning how to use Google Classrooms or MS Teams. Your students are also accumulating new technological skills. If you’re like me, they are learning these skills quicker than you. You might be asking them questions about how to upload assignments or share your screen. With this in mind, don’t be afraid of being a learner. Show them that you are learning how to do some new things. Ask them questions. There’s something empowering when a student is able to teach a teacher. If we are promoting life-long learning, then there are moments when we need to let our guard down so that our students can see that we ourselves are life-long learners.

My other piece of advice as we dive deeply into technological solutions to educating amidst social distancing is to make sure the techniques and technology of education don’t drown out our experience of life. I have told my students how much I miss them at the end of our Zoom sessions. There’s something about being able to see them eye-to-eye in the hallways. I can casually ask them how they’re doing, and they can see the care in my eyes. The technology enables us to connect, but our pixelated, two-dimensional connection is no replacement for embodied presence with one another.

Teach Like Life Depends on It

Someday — hopefully sooner rather than later — we will return to classrooms. We will return having learned some lessons about the nature of education. My hope is that one of the enduring lessons is that education is about life. My hunch is that the reason you come to our humble website is that you get this concept, and that you are striving to provide an education that nourishes the lives of your students. Let me encourage you that I think it will be teachers and schools that feed their students’ souls who have the best hope of surviving this epidemic and even thriving during and after this epidemic. Why do I think this? It is because when people confront forces like our frailty and mortality, we begin to ask questions of meaning and purpose. Parents and students will be looking for this kind of education, one that engages the mind and the soul. Now more than ever is the time to teach like our lives depend on it.

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