Everything changed a couple months ago when school went online. At-home learning has caused every school to attempt schooling in new and creative ways. We can also get creative about habit training during online distance learning. I shared my new eBook on habit training in the classroom about a month before we stopped meeting in classrooms. So here is a brief update where we consider how habit training might work while doing school online.

The Method of Habit Training Doesn’t Change

Even though our classrooms are online and it feels like everything has changed, the method of habit training doesn’t change. Let’s review the basic steps of habit training in general before we get to habit training during online distance learning.

We always begin installing a new habit with an inspirational idea that seeks the best for the child. In this step we are cast a vision of the child as a person with greater freedom, competence, ease, independence and/or autonomy. This inspirational idea does several things at the same time. It excites interest on the part of the child in his or her own development and growth as a person. We are also building an alliance with the child, getting them on board with us as teachers to work on this one new habit together. A good inspirational idea also anticipates the ultimate reward of the new habit, which is actually the habit itself.

After inspiring the child with a compelling idea, we describe in detail the habit itself. Remember to keep this simple. Instructions should be brief and to the point. Avoid lectures and impassioned speeches, as they will miss the mark. Instead, see if you can boil down the habit to three or four steps that are easily repeated by you and the child.

The next step is constant vigilance. You are to be ever watchful to ensure that every opportunity is taken to form the habit as well as making sure old patterns aren’t allowed to return. As the teacher, it is important to be supportive, but the word vigilant is different than supportive in one key way. It is ultimately the work of the child to form the habit. We are shepherds along the way, encouraging, reminding and being present for the child. But we need to be careful not to micromanage the child or attempt to do the work ourselves.

In continuation with constant vigilance is accepting no half measures. The child will be worse off by half forming a habit than she was had we never begun the attempt in the first place. Once begun, the training needs to be taken all the way to its conclusion. This is why it’s so important to select only one or two habits to work on at a time. Accepting no half measures doesn’t mean there will be no lapses or that failure at various stages is unacceptable. Instead, it means when we see those lapses or failures we (who have been constantly vigilant) are right there at the elbow to encourage and remind all the way to the finish line.

Finally, the reward of habit training is the habit itself. The child who has been trained in kindness now reaps the reward of a friendly disposition, is able to forgive and be forgiven, and forges deep and meaningful friendships. The student that turns in assignments on time is rewarded with the satisfaction of his accomplishments and is free from the burden of missed deadlines and a mounting backlog of work. This student can enjoy the leisure that is his by right, having finished in a timely manner.

New Online Habits

As the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl. 1:9) Most of the habits in the online environment are analogous to what we would find in the classroom. This is not to say that the internet doesn’t pose problems with regard to habits and habit training. However, there are some unique habits that are relevant as we think about habit training in an online distance learning environment. We can set aside for now difficulties that are of a technological nature, such as video feeds that are glitchy due to poor internet connections or sounds problems that may be a result of feedback or low-quality hardware. Let’s explore two habits to exemplify the method in an online setting.

The first habit to explore is centering your face in the camera. This is a habit that is more mechanical in nature, but it has some interesting implications. We start with an inspirational idea. “If you were able to get your picture centered in the camera, you would have a more professional looking presence in the group chat.” Here I have connected the student to a particular vision of himself as capable of presenting himself in a more mature way. The detailed description is simple, “Each time you join a group meeting online, adjust your camera or move yourself so that your face is in the center of the picture.” Each online session I have with this student, I’m on the watch for good positioning and will mention any adjustments that need to be made in a calm and supportive way.

I will have set some target dates in my calendar to aim for, so that I can make sure we don’t lose track of this habit in the flurry of activity that can distract us from our goal of mastery of this habit. Ideally, every lesson plan will list this habit. But setting reminders in two-week intervals keeps it fresh in my mind. This habit should be easy to acquire, so I anticipate the student will be squared away even within a month. I’ll keep those reminders on, though, just in case there’s slippage that occurs later on. The child then reaps the reward of the acquired habit. He has a professional presentation, he looks ready to engage in online discussions, he has greater control over his technology, and he’s able to fully focus on work that really matters.

The second habit to explore is a little more difficult. Because we are physically separate from our students, it is harder to gauge how students are doing. They might encounter technological difficulties. They might get behind on their work. We might not be as aware of struggles they are having. What they need to acquire is the habit of self-advocacy. This is a skill I help students with in the classroom, but I have found it to be all the more important with distance learning. We start as always with an inspirational idea. “The more you express how you are doing with your work, the more you will feel a sense of control of your own destiny.” There are many directions I could go with different students. For this child, I sense being in control is valuable to her. For others it might be a sense of independence or being able to finish their work quicker. The detailed description must be boiled down to a simple routine. “Every day you should write me a quick, short email telling me about your day. Tell me what went well and what didn’t go well, especially if you had any problems.” That’s the heart of self-advocacy. Notice I didn’t tell them to ask for help. I didn’t make it conditional, “If you are having problems, then reach out.”

If we’re really going to build the habit, we need lots of repeats. So this child is going to tell me something every day in the form of statements, positive or negative. I’ll be able to figure out if there’s some way I need to help, or if I need to get a parent involved at home. Every day I’m on the watch for that email from her. If I don’t get one, I write immediately. “So sorry I didn’t hear from you yesterday. Could you send me something right now, just so I know everything’s okay?” It’s calm and supportive, but notice the ball remains in the child’s court. She’s supposed to initiate the self-advocacy. I’m not sending her prompts every day. My reminders may extend longer than the previous habit. Self-advocacy can be a difficult habit to acquire, because there are aspects to our personalities that cause us to doubt whether we need help, we feel embarrassment if we need help, or we don’t want to ask for help because we might inconvenience someone else. So expect to work on this one for a while. And don’t relent until it is well formed. A student who has learned how to self-advocate well is well prepared to negotiate numerous kinds of relationships in life, from college professors to a spouse to employers.

The Future of Habit Training

It is my great hope that we will soon return to classrooms. There are many predictions about how life will never be the same again. In many respects, that was always true. Life is never the same again. Obviously what people mean is that there will be remnants of social distancing, economic recovery and cultural shifts in light of a global pandemic. But in other respects, human nature will remain human nature. If you are the kind of person who views children as whole persons, the schooling will remain ever as it was. We educators know that everything changes each year. We can’t just reteach our old lesson plans, because we are dealing with new students. The cultural context is always changing, and yet there are perennial things we will always have as part of our work because we work with children.

So, what is the future of habit training? As we explored habit training in an online distance learning environment, we saw that the heart of the method hasn’t changed. My prediction is that habit training will remain the same. The method I have outlined here was essentially the same in Charlotte Mason’s time, and look how many technological and cultural shifts have occurred since the early 1900s when she wrote her six-volume philosophy of education. What this means is that investing in this method even now will reap benefits in your life as a teacher for years to come.

To that end, I encourage you to check out the eBook, A Guide to Implementing Habit Training. It’s a free download on our website. Feel free to send us a note or write a comment to let us know how habit training is going for you. As teachers we are also a community of learners, and through your questions, comments and perspectives, we can all reach new depths and heights in our skill at the craft of teaching.

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If that weren’t enough, I have criticized and countenanced criticism of online classes and courses, including those prominent classical education ones. Years ago, when my former head of school told me his grand plan for launching an online education platform to expand the reach of our classical Christian school, I argued against it and effectively buried it in the dust.

But times have changed…. And I found myself several weeks ago developing an online learning plan with my colleagues that would aim to preserve our educational philosophy and methods during mandated social distancing. In a way, I had been prepared for this moment through using online communications tools, like Zoom meetings, more than ever before in the last couple years. I had enough experience and understanding that, when the need hit in early March, I knew exactly what I thought we should do.

And so, whether my luddite past or my tech-savvy present appeals to you, perhaps you will be intrigued to hear my thoughts on the benefits and the drawbacks of online learning. Parents, teachers and school leaders need to think through the transformations that are involved in an online education.

As Marshall McLuhan famously quipped,

“The medium is the message.”

How is the educational experience being transformed by the online platforms we are using during social distancing?

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Only if we are aware of the shifts and spend focused attention on understanding the differences, can we make the most of the benefits and mitigate the downsides. And again, while I can’t claim expertise in online learning after a few weeks, perhaps I can make some suggestions that will spark a broader conversation. To that end I offer 3 Benefits to online learning, 3 Drawbacks, and 6 Hacks to Mitigate the Drawbacks.

3 Benefits of Online Learning

#1 Flexibility of Time and Place

I start with the most obvious. Online platforms provide incredible flexibility in both the time and place that learning can occur. Gathering together is a deeply engrained and normative aspect of the human experience. But a global pandemic illustrates one of the more extreme reasons why it might not be ideal.

While viruses do infect our computers, they are of a very different kind (so they tell me…) than the virus that is causing Covid-19. Schools are turning to online learning because it enables us to continue our education in ways that would not have been possible in earlier generations.

A test case for this is Isaac Newton, who was sent home from Cambridge when the school was temporarily closed because of a plague. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recounts in his book Flow,

“Newton had to spend two years in the safety and boredom of a country retreat, and he filled the time playing with his ideas about a universal theory of gravitation.” (137)

While Isaac Newton was able to carry on his studies individually and these studies ended up being immensely profitable, still he couldn’t attend lectures from teachers, discuss with fellow students, or receive and turn in assignments from his professors.

Since Newton was already a lover of wisdom and had the resources he needed to continue learning, this wasn’t debilitating for him. But there were, no doubt, other Cambridge students, who would have profited more from online lessons.

#2 Organization and Grading

The second benefit to many online learning platforms is how the organization and grading features are built right in. Whether it’s Google Classrooms, Microsoft Teams or something else, these tools make it even easier for teachers to organize, turn in, receive and grade assignments than in-person methods.

How much time is wasted by teachers searching through papers and hounding students to turn in assignments? When students are able to turn in the document they were working on the moment they are finished by simply uploading it into the online platform, our memories are unburdened and the logistics of managing assignments are streamlined.

I have to admit that my old school stacks of papers from students are less convenient to organize and grade than the list of assignments turned in from students through Microsoft Teams. They are already happily in alphabetical order, allowing me to easily record the grades in my excel file with a minimum of effort. When I have typed in feedback and a score, I simply click return and the student has received it back again. The wheels of this modern educational process have been thoroughly greased.

#3 Screen Sharing a Text

The final feature that I find incredibly beneficial is the ability to screen share a text with students. When using a Zoom meeting for online learning, screen share enables me to direct student’s attention clearly at text that I have scanned without making copies, wasting paper, or needing every student to have the book in front of them.

While in many cases students do have their own copies of our books, getting everyone to the right page sometimes takes time, and even with brilliant and attentive students, occasionally they find themselves lost, not knowing where we are now in the book. That’s because I like moving quickly, as many other teachers do. When there is a lot to share in a limited time, screen sharing a text and having a number of resources up and ready to jump to on my computer means that I can guide students through a textual journey with almost no friction, as long as they are looking at the screen in front of them.

No moments get wasted when a student calls out, “Wait, where are we again? What page are we on?” Because of screen sharing technology, I can, with proper planning, execute much more intricate and detailed lessons than would otherwise be convenient.

3 Drawbacks of Online Learning

#1 Loss of Personal Connection

You knew it was coming. And this is the main thrust of the argument against online learning that I have used in the past. Online learning necessarily involves a loss of personal connection. We are embodied creatures and while video is incredibly more powerful than a simple phone call, physical presence and proximity do make a difference. Even if it’s hard to articulate the psychological experiences involved, I can feel the loss as a teacher.

Interactions with students are less personal. Rhetorical appeals are less effective. Jokes get fewer laughs and timing is slightly obstructed. Students interact together in more mechanical and artificial ways. Some things may be more efficient, but, when the personal connection is diminished, classical learning aims like mentoring and modelling are perhaps similarly hampered.

I don’t mean to paint the drawback too bleak. They can still see my face and hear my voice and vice versa, and that is not something to take for granted. We can still interact personally in real time. But flesh and blood connections are real. We are rational animals, not incorporeal intelligences and virtual reality will never be reality.

#2 Less Amenable to Improvisation

One drawback that I think extends from the last is how live video conferences seem less amenable to improvisation than in-person classes. I know that some teachers plan out their lessons to a tee. But others of us work with what we’re getting from students. When I lead discussions, I may plan out some discussion questions to ask in advance, but I also improvise based on student response. I watch for where the play of words is taking us and follow the question where it leads. I don’t often have a set of answers we need to get to. In the humanities especially, the lesson evolves as we go, and it does so in response to students’ interaction with me, the text and each other.

This improvisatory teaching method feels harder online. Transitions are more clunky, students are more reticent, and the mood and atmosphere are harder to sense. I can put the students on Gallery Mode and scan their faces in the video screen, but it’s just not the same. It may be that we will all adapt with more hours of practice in this medium, but maybe not. It’s possible that some of the awkwardness, at least, is part and parcel of staring at a screen rather than sitting in the same room with flesh and blood people.

It’s not like video conferencing is the only avenue with this problem. I find that phone calls are always more awkward than face-to-face conversations. That doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. I’ve talked on the phone with my wife for hours and hours on end, especially during the years we were dating. But just because something is better than nothing, doesn’t make it equal to everything. Just as talking on the phone in real time is more personal and improvisatory than writing a letter, so video conferencing is a real blessing. I hope that you will not think me ungrateful for these reflections. But the medium does seem to privilege over-planning because of the loss of in-person feedback.

#3 Distractibility

The final drawback to online learning is a greater distractibility in the participants. This is something I noticed in myself long before experiencing it with students. When I’m on a Zoom meeting on the internet, all the distractions of the internet, my email inbox, and other work I could do at this very moment on this computer call to me in a way that is simply not true when I’m sitting in a room with a person or persons for a meeting.

In Nicholas Carr’s masterful book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains he explains the research behind how our brains are being hardwired to be more distractible. The click-bait and links, the endless scrolling and scanning, the bright lights and colors are all carefully designed to draw our attention and habituate us to the endless wading through the shallows.

It doesn’t seem to be too far of a leap to imagine how this default mode is turned on in ours and our students’ brains more when we’re in a video conference, than if we were present in a room together with all our phones and other devices safely stowed away. The fact of the matter is, I’m tempted to check my email when a notification pops up during an online learning session, when I never would have been while standing in front of a class of students. And if that’s true for me, then it’s definitely true for our students—a fact that might explain the loss of personal connection that I feel, as well as the clunkiness of complex interactions like discussions.

We’re not going to be served well by pretending that the higher distractibility isn’t the case. Yes, it may be harder for some construction going on outside our window to distract the whole class in the same way that we may have experienced at the school building. But we have to reckon with the fact that we are dealing with a higher threshold level of constant distraction, and temptations to distraction, with all our students every moment of a video conference.

And the real problem is that many of the teacher’s best defensive weapons against distraction involve personal face-to-face and one-on-one interventions that are functionally invalidated by the online medium. Moving in closer proximity to a student who is distracted or distracting others and offering a slight tap on the desk to remind him of your expectations is just no longer possible.

So how can we mitigate the drawbacks of decreased personal connection, less effective improvisation and increased distractibility?

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6 Hacks to Mitigate the Drawbacks

#1 Schedule Personal Meetings with Students to Check In

The loss of personal connection can be addressed, at least in part, by scheduling some one-on-one or smaller group video conferences. This may seem like an extra burden to bear for teachers already stressed out by the new and strange situation. But think of it like this: the efficiencies in travel, assignments, and communication have probably freed up some of your time, not to mention all the little pit stops and chatting in the hall interactions that have disappeared from your day. You can probably afford to add to your schedule some systematic check in meetings with students. If you work at a public school, obviously follow whatever regulations and procedures are necessary, and consider small groups of 2-4 students to avoid overload or the appearance of anything out-of-bounds. Consider calling them advising meetings or small group check-ins.

Think of these smaller group meetings as a way to overcome the obstacles of students’ motivation and engagement. For the type of challenging work and deliberate practice learning we’re expecting of our students, personal coaching is necessary.

Also, use the time as an opportunity to field questions and actively seek feedback from the students about the online learning process. You’re new at teaching online, just like they are new at learning online. Actively seeking out what they find most helpful and what they feel is ineffective provides you with a powerful source of insight that allows you to improve your skill in this medium much more quickly. It is also motivating for them to know that you care and value their perspective enough to ask.

This might also be a good time, if you are a homeroom teacher, charged with guiding students spiritually, to ask for prayer requests or provide some wise counsel and advice. We want to find ways to encourage and model the life of faith for our students and this crisis provides just such an opportunity.

#2 Make the Most of the Opening and Closing Minutes

Another way to address the loss of personal connection is to magnify those minutes at the beginning of a video conference when students start showing up, but not enough are there to really begin. Like in a physical classroom, these transitional minutes are a prime opportunity to establish a relational atmosphere. Greet students as they “arrive,” ask them about their day, and find topics to chat about informally.

Especially after the first few online meetings have gone by, it may be tempting to get into a routine and be checking your notes or engaging in some last-minute lesson planning. Instead, savor the personal connections and set goals for making them. It’s important to remember that our relationships and authority as teachers, our ethos, has a powerful effect on how students receive our instruction.

If you’re looking to “optimize” the effectiveness of your teaching, focusing on forming relational connections with students is ironically one of the best investments. Students are eager to learn from a teacher they trust and admire; even the best students struggle to learn well from a cold and distant instructor.

#3 Set Up Discussions Well Ahead of Time

If you’re at all an improvisational teacher like me, or you’re in the habit of using discussions in class to attain learning objectives and promote comprehension and higher order thinking, then you’ll want to adjust your strategy slightly. While our experience and training might incline us to “wing” our discussions, or attempt to execute our standard method of calling out pre-planned questions from the “front” of the class, the clunkiness of the medium will make such discussions hit or miss.

One of the tactics I’ve found most effective in the humanities is to have students read and answer some of my discussion questions ahead of time in writing. Then I send them into breakout rooms (a feature in Zoom that allows you to subdivide your meeting into smaller groups) to discuss and share their answers to those questions. Since they are all required to share and everyone has prepared their thoughts, AND they are in smaller groups, the discussion goes much more smoothly and profitably.

#4 Plan the Tangents

The other way to mimic the experience of the improvisational experience is, paradoxically, to plan more. Tangents and sidetracks can be an exercise in irrelevant trivia or teacher gab in the classroom. But they can also be incredible learning moments, in which students work out the implications for life and relevance of Great Books or make unlikely and creative connections that issue in long-term learning.

It may sound strange to plan these tangents, but an experienced teacher may be able to anticipate where we would have gone (profitably) off the beaten track in our discussion of this or that text. If you do, you can have on the top of your mind a discussion question or high engagement technique (like taking a poll, chat box response, etc.; see #6 below) for turning that tangent into a meaningful moment, in which distractible students are revived with new interest.

#5 Call on Students Frequently

For many teachers, discussions happen like this: teacher asks question, pause, a couple students slowly begin to raise their hand, pause, teacher calls on one of them to respond, and repeat. There are downsides to this approach even in a physical classroom, but in a video conference it is almost unbearably slow, especially since the heightened distractibility will likely slow down the rate and frequency of “hand raises.” It’s much better to adopt the practice of cold calling students.

Cold calling is when the teacher calls on a student by name to respond to a question. It creates a higher standard of accountability for the whole class, because everyone is expected to be able to respond. It also greases the wheels of the discussion process, because it eliminates the pauses, the uncertainty and the engagement decision going on in every student’s mind. If you think about it, there’s a lot of wasted mental space when students are continually questioning within their mind whether or not they should raise their hand to respond. They’re not thinking only about the question, they’re thinking about the social implications of the decision to raise their hand as well.

The best way to cold call in an online meeting is to state the question clearly, perhaps even repeating it once or rephrasing it, then call on a student to respond. Once that student has finished, call on another student by name to respond, perhaps even saying whether they agree or disagree and why. It’s best to keep track of who you’ve called on in some way, whether by name cards or tallies on a list. If you can embed calling on students in as many places as possible in your online teaching, then you can go some way to disincentivize the distractibility of the medium.

#6 Embed Engagement Techniques (like Chat, Polls, Whiteboard, etc.)

Another way to disarm the distractibility of video conference lessons is to embed a variety of engagement techniques. Aside from having a clear lesson plan, equipped with reviving tangents, and screen sharing of texts, some of the great tools for doing this are features I’ve toyed with in Zoom like the Chat boxes, Polls and the Whiteboard. I’m sure there are equivalents on whatever platform you may be using.

The chat box can be helpful for increasing engagement with low stakes or simple to answer questions. When you ask a question that you know is relatively simple, but are feeling low engagement or some reticence from students, it might be the time to require a chat box answer from everyone. It can be as simple as asking every student to type out a single sentence response to your question. Sometimes I then read them out as they are coming in and I cajole late students into giving a response verbally if they are slow in the uptake. The chat box is also a helpful way for you to give information to students, like the discussion questions they should use in their breakout groups.

The poll feature can serve a similar purpose, except that you can limit them to a range of possible answers that you have predetermined. The point to be aware of here is that a poll requires prior planning, so a chat box response can be something you resort to on the fly, whereas a poll is idea for multiple choice questions that function either as a planned tangent or as a spring board for the next activity. Also, if you are aware of the importance of retrieval practice, you could use the poll feature to give students a little bit of low stakes quizzing or formative assessment on their ongoing learning.

Lastly, the whiteboard feature is incredibly helpful for brainstorming content as a class. It can thus function as a basis for video conference narration, where you, say, brainstorm the main plot points, events or topics from a reading all together, listing them on the whiteboard, then call on students individually to elaborate on each in turn. Since the task is clear and the process is straightforward, this makes it easy to avoid distraction and focus intently on the content. The emerging record on the whiteboard draws students’ attention, just like the screen share feature, and directs it, with all the power of the flashing lights and colors of the screen, right where you want it to go.

Helping students focus on this way is thus more likely to push them into the flow state and out of the bored distractibility that is so common online.

Those are my 3 benefits, 3 drawbacks, and 6 hacks to mitigate the drawbacks of online learning. What struck a cord with you? Are there other benefits, drawbacks or hacks you’ve come up with through these weeks of online learning? Share your ideas in the comments!

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An infectious disease causes a pandemic that decimates the major urban centers in northern Italy. Doctors are recognized by their masks. The economy is disrupted through the loss of a workforce. The social order is overturned. Many turn to religion as a response to the pandemic, yet dogmatic norms are questioned. The pope issues indulgences for both those who must practice social distancing as well as for those who are deceased. 

The parallels are stunning. It’s truly hard to tell if we’re talking about the 14th century or the 21st century. The parallels, though, enable us to comprehend our own situation by analyzing a previous situation. In doing so, we can start to plan for an uncertain future by considering new possibilities that are likely to emerge in a post-COVID-19 society. After taking stock of the outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1348 and its impact on European society thereafter, we can then consider some of the similarities and differences between then and now. The goal is to identify how we can anticipate changes in education that are likely to emerge after COVID-19. Last week Kolby wrote an excellent article that looks at our present situation, giving guidance for how we can best approach education while we are social distancing. This article looks to the past to help us consider a possible future.

The End of an Era

It’s important to recognize that the people of the middle ages didn’t think of themselves as the people of the middle ages. It is a label we’ve placed on a rather long era from the fall of Rome (476) to the fall of Constantinople (1453). There was no headline, though, in 476 that stated “The Middle Ages has Begun.” It is difficult to argue that the middle ages is indeed a coherent label for the 1000 year span. So much developed during that time frame that the label becomes meaningless. Yet when we think of three major eras: the ancient world, the middle ages, and the modern world, we can see how the middle ages functions as a bridge from the ancient world to today. The bubonic plague is one of the major events that demarcates a change in era. Europe in 1347 looked and operated very differently than Europe after 1453. We could say, then, that the bubonic plague began the end of an era.

What was the bubonic plague? The strain of bacterium called Yersinia pestis was carried by fleas and rats transported from the East to the West on trade ships. It is not surprising that Genoa and Venice were the epicenters of the European pandemic, as they were the most eminent trade ports in the 14th century. Marco Polo, for instance, was a Venetian who opened up new trade with the East. Venice dominated trade and became a center of massive wealth. The communication between the far East and the West directly led to new ideas and innovations pouring into Europe. But it also opened Europe up to a new infectious disease, and Europe was not well positioned to meet the challenges of Yersinia pestis. Something like 20,000,000 people (or roughly 30% of the population) in Europe died of the bubonic plague during the 1350s. One can only imagine the fear that spread throughout Europe as everyone was either directly or indirectly impacted by the plague.

The structure of society shifted drastically, eventually leading to massive economic, political, religious and social changes. The feudal system of lords and serfs eroded as the decrease of property value diminished the power of the lords and as labor shortages encouraged serfs to leave manors in search of higher wages. Confrontation with death and mortality caused many to become cynical and many others to become religious. The hegemony of the Roman Catholic church in European society slowly broke up. Many priests who were called upon to give last rites themselves contracted the disease. New priests were rapidly ordained with less training, leading to an erosion of theology and an increase in corruption within the church. Simultaneously, major centers of learning began producing new thought leaders questioning the authority of the church.

The Protestant Reformation can be seen as a consequence of the shifts in society caused by the Black Plague. Education turned away from the authority of the church and toward human reason and the autonomous individual, namely humanism. (Too often humanism is viewed as an anti-religious philosophy; however, I see no evidence that humanists were anti-religious. Instead, humanists examined religion critically as they did every element of society. When we look at the art of the humanists, they were as inclined to treat religious themes as any other.) The end of Christendom meant the emergence of new political configurations, approximating something like the nations we now know in Europe. In other words, many of the trends that demarcate post-medieval Europe from the middle ages can be traced directly or indirectly to the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 1350s. The 1350s may not have been the end of an era, but it was at least the beginning of the end of the era.

An Educational Renaissance

The impact of the bubonic plague on education was significant. Almost immediately after the outbreak of the plague, students vacated centers of education, such as the new universities that had popped up in northern Italy, Paris and Oxford. The loss of enrollment and qualified educators led to the decline in the quality of education between 1350 and 1380 (See William J. Courtenay. “The Effect of the Black Death on English Higher Education.” Speculum 55 (1980): 696-714.) However, given the massive decline in the general population due to the plague, it’s all the more surprising to find that enrollment at places such as Oxford increased already by 1375, so much so that Oxford established New College in 1379. It is interesting to note that four colleges at Cambridge were established during the heart of the bubonic pandemic – Pembroke (1347), Gonville and Caius (1348), Trinity Hall (1350), and Corpus Christi (1352) – perhaps indicating that a flourishing of education was already underway concurrently with the plague.

The long-term increase in enrollment against the backdrop of a decrease in population is a curious matter. All the more curious is the increased enrollment in theological programs at Oxford. Courtenay (“Effect,” 713) looks at several economic reasons why enrollment in theology flourished after the pandemic of the 1350s. A significant factor was the increased mobility and improved conditions of the European peasantry, especially in places like Italy and England. Families who would have never imagined a university-bound son were now able to place their child in the path of learning. This began in the local feeder or prep schools, where children learned basic writing, English and Latin grammar, as well as hymns and songs to support the weekly mass. Parish children would have learned in monastic schools. Boys as young as 13 could expect to sit entrance exams for the universities.

Obviously society didn’t experience a complete upheaval, and the peasantry of the 1300s didn’t become like the middle class of today. But enough people were able to take advantage of the economic circumstances of the post-plague situation to enroll in theological studies. Apart from economic circumstances, I would venture to guess that the plague inspired theological reflection in light of the confrontation with death and mortality. A yearning for theological insight seems to be a natural response to a global pandemic.

The implications of this new rise in enrollment at local schools and universities led to an educational renaissance and in time to the historical Renaissance. We can see how the devastating impact of the bubonic plague cleared the ground for new people and new ideas to emerge. Concern for society and the role of the individual led to Humanistic ideas. I’ve written previously about how in the unsettling events of the 14th and 15th centuries people looked to the past for guidance in making a new future. The classics were read once more, with profound political and religious movements emerging, most notably the Protestant Reformation.

Our Plague and Our Educational Renaissance

More and more figures are speaking out that there will be no return to normal after COVID-19. When we look back on the bubonic plague in the 1350s, there was no return to normal. There are many significant differences between then and now. They were dealing with a bacterium, and we are dealing with a virus. They had terrible standards of hygiene. We have a superior medical system. But there are some lessons we can learn that may help prepare us for what is to come after our plague.

First, we should be prepared for an overturned society. My family is fortunate that we can all work from home. My children can do online learning at home. My wife and I can work remotely. But what about those who can’t work remotely. I think about those people who have to work at the factory to make the face masks, the hand sanitizer, the toilet paper, and the respirators that we need. Will there be economic trends that enable the poorer segments of our society to be more upwardly mobile? I hope so. Will we classical Christian schools be prepared to receive new enrollment? We should have already been marketing our educational model to communities who assume their kids don’t belong at our schools. But if we haven’t been, now is the time to make ourselves known in under-served segments of our society.

Second, we should expect new interest in theological and spiritual reflection. Whenever we are confronted by death and our own mortality, a window of opportunity opens for gospel proclamation. The dance macabre image at the top of this article is a portion of a larger painting by Bernt Notke from St. Nicholas Church in Estonia. The church in the 1300s was able to conceptualize the seriousness of the pandemic, while also playfully addressing our human nature. Yes, we are frail, but we are not left without hope. The cross and the resurrection are ours to proclaim. We can expect greater cynicism about God and faith. The more people question biblical Christianity, the more we need to be prepared to teach. I would anticipate that a post-COVID-19 world will see people dissatisfied by secular mass schooling. Small schools teaching biblical Christianity will become more attractive in the wake of our plague.

Third, we should anticipate a turn to the past to chart the future of our global society. A global pandemic is likely to disrupt our trust in modern society. Schools like ours that have taught the classics, Western history, and the great books will be well positioned to meet the needs of society in ways that other schools aren’t. So many modern schools have abandoned the past and will not be able to easily retool themselves to glean the insight our society needs to feed our collective imaginations and address our deepest concerns.

Our plague will lead to our educational renaissance. This is a time when we should highlight our unique features as classical Christian schools. Most of our schools have shown we can handle the rapid transition to online learning environments. So many children are starved for learning with meaningless assignments, while our students are doing meaningful work. As we provide meaningful, purposeful and valuable education, we position ourselves well to gain the trust of those who will be looking for more substance in a post-COVID-19 world.

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But will they? How will families adapt in such a crisis? And how will they ensure their children’s learning continues while at home, far removed from the influence of their teachers?

The Stoics, a philosophical school originating in ancient Greece, gained a place in the annals of history for their fierce resilience in moments like these. Stemming from their determinist outlook on life and commitment to holding personal affection at arms-length, they refused to let the storms of this world throw them off-kilter. Rather than viewing obstacles to their plans as indestructible barriers, they instead saw them as signposts pointing toward a new way forward. As the great Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, wrote:

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way” (Meditations, Book 5.20).

As inspiring as this response may be, most readers of this blog are not Stoics. But many of them are Christians. And like Stoicism, Christianity contains the conceptual apparatus to receive life’s curve balls, even crises, with peace and mental fortitude. What is more, Christians can continue to live their daily lives amidst challenging circumstances with faith (a virtue the Stoics do not share), as they trust in God’s faithfulness and sovereign will over all situations.

With this quiet but stable confidence in God Almighty, Christians need to remain focused on the present calling on each of our lives, which for parents at this time, includes the oversight of the education of their children. Whether a parent of public, private, or home school education, this article will offer both vision and encouragement for what this period of education can look like at home.

The Call of Parenting

While it may be difficult, parents should embrace the reality that supporting the continuation of their children’s learning while at home during this period is a great calling and opportunity. This calling is found in scripture, for example, when the apostle Paul instructs fathers in the Ephesian church to bring up their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4 ESV). Discipline, or training, requires dedicated effort and intentionality on the part of both parent and child. It does not come by accident. And effective instruction, the meeting of minds around wisdom and knowledge, requires the instructor “to know that which he would teach,” as educator John Milton Gregory put it in The Seven Laws of Teaching (26). Most importantly, the discipline and instruction Paul refers to is to be “of the Lord,” that is, God-centered and in line with scripture.

In Parenting: The 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, Paul David Tripp provides some clarity for what God-centered parenting looks like in contrast to human-centered parenting. In particular, he identifies two contrasting parenting mindsets: ownership parenting and ambassadorial parenting.

Ownership parenting begins with the premise: “These children belong to me, so I can parent them in the way I see fit” (13). As Tripp observes, this tends to be the perspective most modern parents fall into. It is motivated by what parents want for their children and from their children. It is fundamentally rooted in a subtle form of selfishness. As a result, this approach tends to distort how parents think about self-identity, work, success, and reputation. Too easily, they begin to locate their self-identity and inner-sense of well-being in their children. They view their work as harnessing the power to turn their children into something, be it their own image or the image of someone else.  

Over time, their view of parenting success morphs into whatever the world deems as success. Popular options include academic achievement, athletic accomplishment, musical ability, or social likeability. Ultimately, this mindset leads parents to fuse their reputations to the “final product” of their parenting: their children become trophies. Needless to say, ownership parenting is not God-centered, biblical parenting and it will ultimately lead to frustration, disappointment, and inevitably, a relational fracturing between parent and child.

Tripp contrasts this human-centered approach of ownership parenting with the God-centered approach of ambassadorial parenting. In international relations, the purpose of an ambassador is to represent the message, methods, and character of the one who sent him (14). In the case of parenting, God has given parents the mission of disciplining and instructing his children. Tripp summarizes it well:

“Parenting is ambassadorial work from beginning to end. It is not to be shaped and directed by personal interest, personal need, or cultural perspectives. Every parent everywhere is called to recognize that they have been put on earth at a particular time and in a particular location to do one thing in the lives of their children. What is that one thing? God’s will. Here’s what it means at a street level: parenting is not first about what we want for our children or from our children, but about what God in grace has planned to do through us in our children” (15).

Parents who adopt the ambassadorial mindset of parenting can rest in the fact that they are not autonomous but instead report to a higher authority. They are therefore not obligated to create, develop, and execute a self-proposed plan for their children, but instead need simply to follow the marching orders of God as presented in scripture. I use the word “simply,” but don’t mistake simplicity with ease. Biblical parenting is far from easy. It requires rigorous training, instruction, and the pursuit of godliness.

But when parents can reach a place in which the leadership of their homes ultimately is dependent on and rooted in the grace of God, incredibly blessing is the result. It allows parents to support their children in all sorts of worthwhile pursuits and cultivation of skills, including music, sport, art, and crafts such as carpentry, from a posture of confidence in God rather than a spirit of anxiousness.

Now that I have laid out the calling for God-centered parenting, let me know turn to the topic of education, which is particularly relevant at this time when so many parents are unexpectedly finding themselves responsible for continuing their children’s education at home.

Rather than offering parents guidance on how to educate (see other articles on our website), I want to instead offer some motivation for why education continues to be so important in the modern world. It therefore is not a responsibility parents should take lightly, but instead should seize as an exciting opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of their children.

Educating for the 21st Century

In Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm of Classical Learning, authors Robert LittleJohn and Charles T. Evans remind their readers how much is at stake in equipping students to face the unique challenges they will encounter in the 21^st century (see Patrick’s Review). In particular, Littlejohn and Evans identify three major developments in the world today that engender the need for both an enriching and strategic education. They aren’t referring to developments that have merely emerged in the last few weeks, but rather, in the last several decades. These developments are important for parents to be aware of as they begin to temporarily step into the role as home educators.

The first development is an economic one. While there will always be a need for men and women to work particular trades, the majority of the workforce today can be characterized as “knowledge workers,” a term coined by management expert Peter Drucker. This sort of work calls for highly creative and adaptable individuals who are able to pick up new skills quickly and teach themselves new concepts without much guidance (11). These individuals need to be able to think on their feet and outside the box, and not be intimidated by a field of knowledge they have not yet studied. Moreover, with the unprecedented rise in technological advancement, the economy calls for not a small minority of these men and women to be fluent in the languages of math and science, computer programming and engineering (12). In other words, the need for sharp minds and piercing intellects is arguably greater than ever.

The second development in the world today which requires a unique education to face it pertains to morality. The explosion of economic progress in the West has brought with it a host of corporate scandals fueled by unrestrained greed and shameless deception (12). At the same time, traditional assumptions regarding marriage, sexual ethics and gender identity have been called into question. Over the last century, the western world has undergone various iterations of secularization, leaving its constituents to figure out for themselves which moral compass, if any, they will choose to follow. If the sociologists are right, then Gen Z, the generation of students born between 1997 and 2012, truly is the first post-Christian generation.

The third development LittleJohn and Evans identify as significant for educators to consider today is the broad philosophical movement from modernism to postmodernism. In modernism, particularly with the dawn of the Enlightenment, truth was assumed to be objective and knowable. While there was certainly debate over the most reliable source of truth (science, history, economics, psychology, or religion), it was hardly called into question whether objective truth was out there and accessible. In the present moment, however, what some cultural analysts have called postmodernism, it is no longer generally assumed that objective truth exists, much less whether it is knowable. The intellectual hubris of modernism has been replaced with an unexpected humility, though it is a humility rooted in an apathetic, insidious relativism: “You believe your truth and I’ll believe mine.”

In light of these three developments, parents need to be strategic regarding the education they choose, and in some cases provide, for their children. In particular, Christian parents who desire to equip their children to be culture makers, and not simply cultural critics, need to take seriously what tools are needed to face the unique challenges this third millennium poses. As ambassadors of God, heavenly envoys called to represent and embody his mission, parents have a real opportunity to shape the lives of their children in a God-centered direction. This opportunity begins, first and foremost, in the home.

Life Together at Home

So far in this blog, I laid out a vision for parenting from a biblical perspective and planted some seeds for thinking about the sort of education parents should seek for their children in the 21st century. Of course, for us at Educational Renaissance, this education is going to be Christian, classical education. Now I would like to close by offering a practical place for parents to start: the cultivation of Christian community in the home.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian-turned-spy during the Nazi regime, actually wrote a short treatise on the significance and contours of Christian community, called Life Together. Reflecting on his own experience in Finkenwalde, the seminary Bonhoeffer led amidst opposition to Hitler, Bonhoeffer reminds us that Christian community should never be taken for granted or perceived as human-earned. Bonhoeffer explains:

“It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken from any of us any day…. Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their hearts. Let them thank God on their knees and realize: it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.” (30)

Bonhoeffer penned these words after Finkenwalde had been finally shut down by Nazi occupation. He had experienced authentic, life-giving Christian community and now understood what it is like to live on the other side of it. Parents likewise should not take this opportunity to shape Christian community in their home for granted. While it will be difficult, no doubt, especially during this period of home isolation, it remains a channel of blessing, a vehicle through which parents and children alike can experience the goodness of God. In fact, one example of Christian community Bonhoeffer has in mind as he writes this is family life. He explains that God gives various measures of the gift of visible community and that one example is “…the privilege of living a Christian life in the community of their families” (30). 

So what does Christianity community look like for Bonhoeffer?

It is a community centered around Jesus Christ in which the Word of God rules. It is characterized by service and agape love rather than self-centered ambition. The sort of service he has in mind is simple and humble, rather than occurring in a searching, calculated fashion (38). It entails mutual submission to one another rather than the pursuit of subjugation over others. 

Ultimately, of course, it is a community of grace that is received, not earned, through Jesus Christ. As Bonhoeffer puts it,

“Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our community is in Jesus Christ alone, the more calmly we will learn to think about our community and pray and hope for it.” (38)

Of course, we must not conclude that, because community, like other elements of grace, is an unmerited gift from God, there is no injunction or personal responsibility on our part to cultivate it. The apostle Paul, who adamantly teaches that salvation is a free gift from God simultaneously enjoins the Philippian church “…to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12 ESV). It is the responsibility of each parent to lead their home into this community of grace and instruct their children how to live life together. We should not expect this to be easy. There will be conflict, acts of unkindness, and moments of selfishness that surface from time to time, every day even. But amidst these challenges, there will also be moments of forgiveness, love, joy, peace, patience, and all the fruits of the Spirit.

My prayer for families during this extended period of home isolation is that they would grow closer together as they learn to love, serve, and teach one. For parents who now find themselves in the surprising role as home educator, remember, you are first and foremost an ambassador, called by God and equipped to complete his mission. So do your best, train your children in good habits, teach them living books through the practice of narration, and leave the results to God.

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