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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Next Article in this Series: “Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s”

An example of this can be found in Leisure the Basis of Culture where Josef Pieper defended the role of leisure as a deeply human and transcendent experience. Leisure, for Pieper, is properly defined as a celebratory and worshipful stepping apart from the workaday world. It looks and feels more like contemplation or the philosophical act. More recently Chris Perrin, founder of Classical Academic press, has drawn from this idea to commend school as schole, returning us to the linguistic history of the word ‘school’ as leisure. 

The point here is that the purpose of education is something grander and wider than we often allow it to be when we focus on the needs and goals of the workaday world. It entails a sort of restful contemplation that does not have in view mere practical considerations. In this account, then, education is about stepping away from the utilitarian world and embracing the transcendence implied in our human nature. As the teacher of Ecclesiastes puts it, God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccl 3:11 ESV). 

David Hicks too in the classic Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education zeroed in on the crass utilitarian values of a technocratic state. As he pointedly expressed in the prologue:

The modern era cannot be bothered with finding new answers to old questions like: What is man and what are his purposes? Rather, it demands of its schools: How can modern man better get along in this complicated modern world? Getting along — far from suggesting any sort of Socratic self-knowledge or stoical self-restraint — implies the mastery of increasingly sophisticated methods of control over the environment and over others. Man’s lust for power, not truth, feeds modern education. But this fact does not worry the educator. From his point of view, the new question has several advantages over the old, the most notable being that it better suits his scientific problem-solving approach. Like the ancient Sophist, he is out to build his status by proving his usefulness; and like the Sophist, he appears unabashedly confident in the efficacy of his methods, which in a peculiar way bestow on him the power to bestow power.

In doing so Hicks struck a chord similar to C.S. Lewis’ masterful The Abolition of Man which defended traditional values against the modernist aim of creating “men without chests”. In analyzing the Green Book, an unnamed modern textbook, Lewis reveals how its authors, instead of teaching English, teach a questionable philosophy that is suspicious of human values. A modernist preference for so-called “objective facts” has pushed out of consideration–and therefore out of the educational project–human values like beauty and honor. Treating such things as merely personal subjective feelings, they have stripped education of its heart and turned it into a head game. 

This modern fallacy, Lewis said, has colossal implications that pave the way for the totalitarian state to make men of its own choosing. The men at the top of the power structure (the enlightened scientists and government bureaucrats) will inevitably feel the need to use their power to condition men according to their own schemes, since traditional and transcendent values have now become subjective preferences that they can manipulate for their own ends. Lewis closes his short tour-de-force with an appendix demonstrating the trans-cultural nature of certain moral values and principles, developing on his reference to the tao or moral law in his argument. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Less than a decade later on the other side of the Atlantic, a committee of American college and university examiners, headed by Benjamin S. Bloom, the University Examiner at the University of Chicago, set out on a project to classify the educational objectives of teachers. While we may not think of Bloom’s taxonomy as participating in this broader modern discussion of the purpose of education, their idea of creating a taxonomy for educational goals inevitably interacts with broader questions of purpose. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Six Categories of Objectives in the Cognitive Domain

1. Knowledge

1.1 Knowledge of Specifics

1.2 Knowledge of Ways and Means of Dealing with Specifics 

1.3 Knowledge of the Universals and Abstractions in a Field

2. Comprehension

2.1 Translation

2.2 Interpretation

2.3 Extrapolation

3. Application
4. Analysis

4.1 Analysis of Elements

4.2 Analysis of Relationships

4.3 Analysis of Organizational Principles

5. Synthesis

5.1 Production of a Unique Communication

5.2 Production of a Plan, or Proposed Set of Operations

5.3 Derivation of a Set of Abstract Relations

6. Evaluation

6.1 Judgments in Terms of Internal Evidence

6.2 Judgments in Terms of External Criteria

Bloom’s taxonomy is virtually ubiquitous in contemporary educational circles. One of my first years teaching at a classical Christian school, a list of all the verbs associated with Bloom’s cognitive domain of educational objectives was handed to me and my colleagues, with the instruction: “Be sure to ask discussion questions and give assignments that involve students in higher order thinking, and not just low level knowledge!” Colorful charts and diagrams of Bloom’s taxonomy abound on the internet, especially on teacher websites. Many reflect the revision published by a group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers in 2001, which renamed and slightly restructured the 6 major objectives of the cognitive domain. 

Bloom’s taxonomy has become one of those fixed touchpoints in contemporary education that simply falls into the assumed architecture of the discipline. Everyone accepts Bloom’s or revised Bloom’s. Everyone implicitly practices Bloom’s methodology when they identify learning objectives, whether for their course, unit plan or an individual lesson. Virtually no one, as best as I can judge, has actually read the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals: Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. Nor has anyone seriously questioned the underlying assumptions on which it is based. 

I began with the lead-in references to Pieper, Lewis and more contemporary classical education advocates, because their critiques have relevance for the educational project of Bloom et al. Arguably their classification of educational objectives suffers from the same modernist privileging of “objective facts” over human values. To be sure, they envisioned a project that embraced educational objectives in three domains: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. In this way, they attempted to signal the importance of the heart and the body, as well as the mind. But the way they construed the affective domain handbook (finally published a decade later) and their sharp divide between these areas ultimately ended up reinforcing the popular neglect of these domains, rather than reviving them. Ultimately, whether or not it was their fault or intention, almost no one uses Bloom’s taxonomy of the affective domain in any significant way, and the psychomotor domain was not even addressed by them, though a few other educators have proposed their own subcategories since.

For all intents and purposes then, Bloom’s taxonomy has privileged the cognitive over the affective and psychomotor; the head is focused on, to the neglect of the heart and the body. This is an outcome we would have expected of a generation of educators bred on curricula like the Green Book that Lewis so eloquently deconstructed in The Abolition of Man. Besides, their vocation as college examiners and their purpose for creating the taxonomy in the first place inevitably privileged the types of goals that could be easily measured on a modern test. Such goals too easily overlook the broader and deeper purposes of education that classical educators have tried to recover.

The outcome of Bloom’s taxonomy, then, was the contemporary privileging of the bare intellect in school settings, even if athletics and arts are still sometimes the dog that wags the tail of specific educational institutions. In his book Desiring the Kingdom James K.A. Smith has traced this modern emphasis on human beings as “thinking things,” primarily cognitive intellects at their best, back to Descartes’ philosophical project in search of objective truth and the Enlightenment as a whole. But rather than simply blaming Bloom and his committee or Descartes and his ilk–educators and philosophers who, after all, may have had the best of intentions–we may simply acknowledge that it is our modern way of thinking about ourselves and education that has poisoned the stew. 

After all, Bloom and his compatriot’s goal was relatively modest. They sought to articulate a taxonomy of generally accepted educational objectives to provide clarity for teachers, curriculum writers and examination writers. The point of the taxonomy was to gain widespread acceptance of a common language, thereby avoiding the vague, ambiguous and equivocal statements of educational objectives that were already in use at the K-12 and collegiate level. So Bloom’s taxonomy merely categorized and standardized the language that was already in use and reflected the popular trickle down of an earlier era’s philosophical trends. 

A Classical Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

The contention of this series is that, as Lewis famously quipped in Mere Christianity, we must go back to go forward. Having taken a wrong track, the quickest way forward is to turn around. Progress sometimes requires regress. 

But backtracking is more effective if one knows where one has gone astray. Otherwise we may find ourselves wandering back aimlessly with simply a regressive spirit that assumes that anything earlier or more traditional is better. We cannot ignore the real educational advances of the modern era. And so a simple tossing aside of Bloom’s Taxonomy will not do either. We must propose some account of the value of the project of classifying educational objectives, even if we reframe the enterprise in different terms. 

To this end I am proposing a return to Aristotle’s classification of Five Intellectual Virtues, as a replacement for Bloom’s six orders of cognitive domain goals. The five intellectual virtues are introduced and explained in their relation to one another in Book VI of the Nichomachean Ethics:

Let us begin, then, from the beginning, and discuss these states once more. Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are five in number, i.e. art, knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, comprehension…. (1139b.14ff.)

From The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (Princeton: 1984), 1799

In successive articles, I will cite Aristotle’s discussions of each of these intellectual virtues in turn and explain his distinctions between the intellectual virtues and how that initiates a seismic shift in our understanding of the broader purpose of education, as well as our lesson by lesson objectives. However, since Aristotle’s description of the intellectual virtues in Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics is not as detailed with sub-categorization as Bloom’s Taxonomy, it will need to be developed and re-appropriated in light of contemporary Christian educational concerns, in order to serve as a rival taxonomy. Therefore, this series could properly be called a neo-Aristotelian Christian taxonomy of educational goals, since it represents a Christian development from within the Aristotelian tradition. 

While a fair amount of this project will involve reading and interpreting Aristotle, there will be times where his assumptions and language will have to be challenged or updated, either from broader Christian philosophical considerations, practical educational circumstances, or recent developments in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. I will endeavor to signal when and how my proposal differs from Aristotle’s viewpoints, as best as I can understand them. In addition, I must confess to giving a layman’s reading of Aristotle’s ethics, as myself a lover of wisdom but without the specialization to wade into the discipline’s detailed criticism of the whole Aristotelian corpus. When my views differ from the consensus interpretation of Aristotle or there is a major division in schools of thought on an issue pertinent to my proposal, I will alert the reader in a note. 

Aristotle’s Five Intellectual Virtues

1. Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship
   1. Common and domestic arts
   2. Professions and trades
   3. Athletics and sports
   4. Fine and performing arts
   5. The liberal arts of language and number
2. Episteme — (Scientific) Knowledge
   1. Natural
   2. Human
   3. Metaphysical
3. Phronesis — Prudence or practical wisdom
   1. Personal
   2. Household
   3. Managerial and Political
   4. Understanding and Judgment
4. Nous — Intuition or comprehension
   1. Of Universals
   2. Of Particulars
5. Sophia — (Philosophic) Wisdom
   1. Mastery of induction and deduction
   2. Knowledge and intuition combined
      • Natural
      • Human
      • Metaphysical

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of reviving Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues is the light it sheds on the subsequent history of classical education. The curriculum and pedagogy of the liberal arts tradition, as recovered by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain (and others), appears in a new clarity and radiance, when seen through the magnifying glass of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. 

While it may seem like proposing the “intellectual virtues” of Aristotle hardly solves the issue of privileging the intellect over the heart and body, Aristotle’s concepts contain within them a proper integration of body, heart and head. For instance, techne or artistry often involves clear bodily connections that would qualify under the psychomotor heading of Bloom. In a similar way, phronesis or prudence involves the heart and Aristotle details and explains its specific connection to the moral virtues (which deserve a book of their own). This solves the problem of privileging one over the other better than Bloom’s original scheme, because what we really need is not just an account of educational objectives in each area, as if they were all equivalent and interchangeable, but also a principle for integrating the excellences or virtues that are proper to the different spheres of the human person. 

The task set before us, therefore, begins with analyzing where we have come: the good, the bad and the ugly of Bloom’s taxonomy. Next, it will be necessary to explain in some detail each of Aristotle’s five virtues as an alternate set of educational objectives. Lastly, we will work out what it might look like for our schools, our curriculum and our courses to aim at the intellectual virtues in a modern setting, including what shifts in focus and pedagogy that would entail. Such an endeavor promises to be a bumpy ride, so buckle your seat belts and hang on for this new series on Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues as a classical taxonomy of educational objectives.

Next Article in this Series: “Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s”

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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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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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The greatest liability of education is an undue focus on the intellect. One of the chief concerns teachers have when they plan their lessons is the conveyance of knowledge. This is indeed an important aspect of teaching. But this is not the only aspect of teaching and perhaps actually not the most important, despite the fact that the intellect or mind would seem to be the chief organ we’re concerned with in education. This misunderstanding of our educational aims has the potential to misalign our goals and strategies as educators.

In previous posts, I have shown how a focus on intellectual knowledge has been the chief concern of educational thinkers and policy makers over the past several decades, who boil down the intellect to standards of intellectual achievement measured by standardized testing. Don’t get me wrong, the intellect needs to be trained and it is a lofty goal for educators to train the minds of our young ones.

The point I will make here, though, is that there is so much more to a person than just their intellect, and that it is essential for educators to consider the whole person if we are to properly align our goals and strategies. If the mind is not the only organ of learning, then we do our students a disservice by only training that organ. As we explore what it means to educate the whole person, we will draw upon the wisdom of ancient and modern thinkers as they express the power of habit training.

“With All Your Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength”

When we speak about the whole person, what do we mean? Let us consider the human person from a biblical perspective. Human beings are embodied souls. The concept of imago Dei in Genesis 1:26-27 means there is a spark of divinity that resides within each individual person. The embodiment of this divine spark means, however, that we are physical creatures, existing temporally, regulated by the laws of our natural universe. The imago Dei connects us to our creator such that our soul’s greatest desire is to relate to God. The Hebrew Bible expresses this in terms of a law:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:5)

This tripartite expression of our personhood considers three organs: heart, soul, and body. This tripartite division, though, is not as cut and dried as we might want. Ancient thinkers as well as Christian theologians have noted the will, conscience, intuition, reason, imagination, emotion and, yes, the intellect as other constituent parts of our being. Grappling with what we are and what we are made of is not a straightforward exercise. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 in Mark 12:30 and includes an interesting word:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

The mind has now been added to the list. Matthew and Luke condense the list back down to three – soul, mind and strength – combining heart and mind as synonyms for the same organ. The biblical testimony is that we are complex creatures, multifaceted, resonant with our Creator, and fit with diverse organs that operate a wide array of human functions.

In his book You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith connects our multifaceted nature to learning. He writes:

Every approach to discipleship and Christian formation assumes an implicit model of what human beings are. While these assumption usually remain unarticulated, we nonetheless work with some fundamental (though unstated) assumptions about what sorts of creatures we are—and therefore what sorts of learners we are. If being a disciple is being a learner and follower of Jesus, then a lot hinges on what you think ‘learning’ is. And what you think learning is hinges on what you think human beings are. In other words, your understanding of discipleship will reflect a set of working assumptions about the very nature of human beings, even if you’ve never asked yourself such questions.

Smith, You Are What You Love, 2-3

What Smith enables us to see is that our model of learning and discipleship hinges on our model of human nature. If we fundamentally think of human beings as physical creatures, our model of teaching will be like training. If we fundamentally think of human beings as intellectual, our model for teaching becomes knowledge transfer. Smith challenges the latter of these understandings of human beings, noting that an intellectual model of “assumes that learning (and hence discipleship) is primarily a matter of depositing ideas and beliefs into mind-containers” (3). One might expect Smith to draw upon James for support (“I will show you my faith by my works”), but he actually turns to Paul, quoting his prayer in Philippians 9-11. The key phrase for him is “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” We can note along with Smith that the order is not that knowledge may abound, although the mind is not far behind. Instead it is that love may abound.

There is a very different model of the human person at work here. Instead of the rationalist, intellectualist model that implies, “You are what you think,” Paul’s prayer hints at a very different conviction:

“You are what you love.” | What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers?”

Smith, You Are What You Love, 7

For Smith, the heart better models the seat of learning and discipleship than the mind. This shift in models for learning means that education is not merely knowledge work, but the cultivation of affections. In order to cultivate the whole person in this fuller understanding of what it means to be a human being, habit training becomes an essential tool for learning.

Common Grace Habits

Training the heart comes by instilling habits. This concept, though, has often raised questions in the minds of Christian parents and educators. We can only love because he first loved us. The work of justification and sanctification comes through the work of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t habit training a circumvention of God’s work in our lives?

Jason has written previously on habit training, connecting the dots between moral virtues as expressed by Plato and Aristotle and the Christian doctrine of common grace. His point was so well made that it deserves rearticulation here. He makes the point that even though human beings are born fallen, depraved and sinful,

“human society would completely fly off the rails if God did not also grant the grace of moral virtue, distributed generally (i.e. in common) to people, regardless of their spiritual condition.”

Jason goes on to distinguish the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, which we would say are “imparted by the Holy Spirit as a result of true repentance,” and the cardinal virtues (such as courage, temperance and prudence), which are cultivated by habit or practice. We hear similar refrains from Aristotle and from the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes, “The virtues (αἱ ἀρεταί) on the other hand we acquire by first having actually practised them (ἐνεργήσαντες).” (Nichomachean Ethics 2:1 or 1103a15-b25; trans. H. Rackham).

A similar refrain echoes in Psalm 111:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Or consider Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The wise and virtuous person acquires good habits through training or practice.

Returning to our theme, it is noteworthy that virtue and wisdom are acquired through a process that is fairly physical in nature. Constant repetition, like a gymnast practicing a routine or a baseball player repeatedly swinging a bat, is the impression these passages leave us with. This is far more effective than a mere appeal to the intellect by way of a lecture.

Christ Our Habitude

Building on Jason’s work regarding the connection between habit training and common grace, I would like to make the case for habit training as likewise essential to our understanding of saving grace. It is a common misunderstanding of the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works to think that human effort has no place in God’s salvific work. One might call upon James to make this point (“I will show you my faith by my works”), but we can find this point made repeatedly in Paul.

In 1 Timothy 4, Paul exhorts Timothy to train disciples in the faith, “being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.” We might tend to focus on Paul’s injunction in 4:11, “Command and teach these things.” This is quickly followed by Paul telling Timothy to devote himself to “the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” Here is the appeal to the intellect, right? However, we should examine the advice Paul gives Timothy leading up to this command.

Paul says in 4:7, “train yourself for godliness” equating this to bodily training in 4:8, noting that training in godliness is of greater importance to bodily training. Paul notes that we toil and strive in this pursuit of godliness, secure in the “hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” (4:10). So it is not actually an appeal to the intellect that Paul advises, but that Timothy should command and teach this very physical pursuit of godliness. Timothy himself should be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, laying out the pathway his disciples should follow in their pursuit of godliness. This is a very active faith.

Paul’s advice to Timothy resonates with what he writes to the Philippians. Here we can clarify the uselessness of works or effort as it relates to merit. Paul writes in Philippians 3:9 that he is “found in him, not having a righteousness of [his] own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Human works are worthless in terms of meriting salvation. God saves based on the work of Christ, which is appropriated through faith, not by works.

However, Paul goes on to describe a faith that is very active. “I press on,” he writes in 3:12, “to make it my own.” Paul is making a habitation in Christ. When a person is justified, they now live “in Christ.” We take on the habits that are consistent with Christ, training out the bad habits and training in the good habits so that our lives become more and more conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.

Christian discipleship according to Paul is a putting on of Christ Jesus. This is what it means to take up our cross daily. We become habituated through regularly reconnecting with the cross of Christ. Habit training as a spiritual exercise enable us to live in Christ, to have Christ as our habitude.

Daily Spiritual Habits

Education is not merely about training the intellect. Our exploration of theological concepts has assisted us in conceptualizing how habit training permeates the entirety of God’s grace in our lives. Education deals with the heart and soul as much as it deals with the mind. To that end I would like to briefly consider a number of daily habits worthy of consideration.

Pray always. That’s a tall order. How many of us faced with the immensity of constant prayer wind up never praying, even though we are intellectually committed to the benefits of prayer. Establishing a daily habit of prayer takes some planning. If you would like to grow in consistency of prayer, attach prayer to an already established habit. If you make coffee for yourself every morning, add prayer to that routine. Maybe brushing your teeth every evening is a solid habit. Build another habit on top of it by spending some time in prayer afterwards.

To form habits, one must be able to accomplish something regularly and consistently. So don’t set yourself a goal of an hour in prayer every day if you haven’t done five minutes consistently. Instead, set a small goal – like five minutes – that you know you can do automatically every time. You are likely to do more, but your small goal means you are more likely to follow through each time.

Gratitude has become a catchphrase in positive psychology these days. Yet Scripture calls us to give thanks regularly. For instance, steadfast prayer is coupled with thanksgiving in Colossians 4:2. In the rush of our daily routines, it can be difficult to pause and reflect on the good God has accomplished in our lives each and every day. Just like prayer, we can add a moment of thanksgiving into our daily routines.

There are many practices faithful Christians have found meaningful for their lives. Perhaps there’s a practice you feel called to make a regular part of your life. Personal habit training can be a means to a deeper walk with God in Christ.

If you would like to learn more about habit training, download my free eBook A Guide to Implementing Habit Training.

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John the Baptist as Teacher

John the Baptist lived an austere lifestyle. He adhered to asceticism, wearing garments made of camel hair and restricting his diet to locusts and wild honey (Mark 1:6). John’s ministry lines up with the classic prophets of the Old Testament, as seen in his challenge of the political and religious elite in Jerusalem, but also in the manner of his address. For instance, he says of himself, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” clearly alluding to Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:23). John the Baptist as a teacher draws upon the way in which discipleship or mentoring was modeled among many of the classic prophets. Martin Hengel notes particularly the relationship between Elijah and Elisha in his book The Charismatic Leader and His Followers. Hengel’s point was that Jesus calling his own disciples mirrored that of the OT prophetic tradition (see in particular pp. 17-18). This model, though, is likewise helpful in understanding John the Baptist, who also had a group of disciples (John 1:35), including Jesus of Nazareth.

John’s role as a teacher of Jesus might seem a bit of a stretch, given that John is never depicted as teaching Jesus. But the evidence that John played a formative role in Jesus’ life is seen in his inclusion at the beginning of all four gospels, right at the conclusion of Jesus formative years. Jesus’ baptism by John points to the familiarity between the two. In Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John there is simultaneously a submission on Jesus’ part to John as well as a recognition by John of Jesus’ superior role and mission. J. Ramsey Michaels bases the discipleship of Jesus to John on the phrase “he who comes after (ὀπίσω) me.” E. P. Sanders concludes after a close study of John 1-3, that Jesus’ mission “while independent of that of the Baptist’s, is similar in nature and near in locale.” The scholarly consensus is that Jesus spent some amount of time as a disciple of John before beginning his own ministry, but this consensus has not gone unchallenged. A recent PhD thesis at Edinburgh proposes that Jesus in all probability did not spend any time as a disciple of John. Max Alpin’s reasoning is essentially based on the fact that “Jesus had great confidence in his beliefs,” meaning “we simply would not expect him to have chosen to submit himself to John’s leadership.” In my estimation, there seems to be no problem with an individual having great confidence in his beliefs submitting to the teaching of a prominent religious figure. I think the prominent role John the Baptist plays at the beginning of all four gospels points to an essential influence John had on Jesus to frame his early ministry. The gospel of John elaborates by hints a closer connection, showing that Jesus chose his own first disciples from among John’s disciples (John 1:25). Seeing Jesus’ early ministry in light of time spent learning from John provides insights into some key moments in the gospels.

John’s message was simple: ““Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). People came from far and near to hear John and some received baptism, while others scoffed. The message is expressed with simplicity, yet is full of meaning. There is the call to listeners to an active response. The imminence of God’s heavenly kingdom evokes an emotional factor eliciting hope or impending doom. When we look at Jesus’ ministry, we see he proclaims the very same message. Matthew records Jesus first message: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Now this wasn’t a rote, memorized, dry recitation. Jesus’ proclamation has all of the conviction and passion that John expressed. The point, though, is that we have in this shared message a link between teacher and student. Viewed from the vantage point of models of communication, we can verify that the teacher’s message has been properly decoded and assimilated. John the Baptist, his role as predecessor completed, recedes into the background in the Gospels, perhaps as we would expect in a story centering on Jesus himself.

Jesus as Learner

Jesus as learner is a remarkable reality when we take into account his divine and human natures. Consider that the fullness of God (all knowledge, all power, everywhere present) became incarnate in a helpless baby (no knowledge, vulnerably powerless, physically present in one location). Paul expresses this as making himself “nothing” (Phil. 2:7). This humiliation meant that Jesus had to learn information he had called into existence. The author of all language had to acquire a mother tongue as we did. He learned the trade of carpentry from his father. He devoted himself to learning the very scriptures that he had inspired and that pointed to himself.

I think the incarnation tells us something profound about learning. Jesus entered fully into our human experience, validating something fundamental to our nature: to be human is to be a learner. We can fall prey to the notion that education is temporary, something to finish early in our youth before getting on with “real” life. True, much that has to be learned occurs early in life. Jesus’ training under John the Baptist was limited to a definite span of time followed by Jesus’ own career as a teacher. But Jesus’ learning is not isolated to his formative years. Hebrews 5:8 provides the insight that he learned obedience through his sufferings. Helmut Koester explains that “Jesus was never disobedient to God,” but that Jesus was able to “demonstrate obedience” by encountering difficult situations in his humanity “where the will of God was challenged and obedience was required.” In other words, the entirety of Jesus’ incarnate human experience was a learning experience, captured by the Greek word μανθάνω in Heb. 5:8. All of his life experiences, particularly those which caused him to suffer, were learning experiences. At one level, we can imagine that Jesus divesting himself of divine attributes to become human flesh (Phil. 2:7), was a form of suffering through the new limitations encountered in bodily form. But we can also point to the sufferings chronicled leading up to his crucifixion. The author of Hebrews makes this connection in 9:26, concluding that Jesus’ sufferings culminated in a one-time sacrifice to “put away sin.”  His entire life was a learning experience (just as his entire life is a teaching experience, but that is a topic for another time).

Learning is a profound aspect of human nature. Part of being image bearers is that we are learners. God incarnates himself in Christ into this nature. We must throw off the conception that learning is either for the ignorant or for only a short period of life. If learning is part of our nature, then all of life contains opportunities to learn. Learning doesn’t just occur in the classroom, but also in all possible spaces and throughout all possible ages. There is always something new to learn. This is not a result of the fall, but it is an essential aspect of our nature. In the Garden, prior to the fall, we see learning occur as God instructs the first man to obey the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17). Calvin refers to this event as “a kind of first lesson in obedience.” There is yet another moment of applied learning as God brings all the animals before the first man to be named (Gen. 2:19).

Learning and Teaching as Followers of Jesus

Today we have a tendency to treat education as a means to an end. Learning occurs for a brief spell at the beginning of life so that one can accomplish things later in life. Jesus’ incarnation as a learner, however, shows us that learning is something inherent to us as humans. Therefore, we must be careful not to compartmentalize learning as something to finish so that we can get on with the business of living life. The utility of education cannot be made to overshadow our human longing to learn. Learning is a creative and generative endeavor that reflects our own creation in the image of God. In light of this, we can consider several principles that enlighten our understanding of the nature and goals of education.

First, God’s revelation to humanity occurs through language. We see this first illustrated in Genesis 1 as all of creation is spoken into being by divine expression. The reflection on the incarnation found in the gospel of John expresses Jesus as the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Not only in the fact of God revealing himself to his creation, but also in the means by which he reveals himself, education and learning are essential aspects of our relationship with God. Divine truth is disseminated in language we can comprehend, making it possible for us to learn. This doesn’t mean that it is easy to learn God’s self-disclosure. That is why education must cultivate the intellect. God’s word is not only to be read, but also reflected upon, interpreted and applied. This is not to say that the spirit does not guide understanding of the text (a point which we’ll turn to momentarily), but we can at least say that a trained intellect is predicated upon the manner by which God reveals himself.

Second, through the incarnation God demonstrates his empathetic care for people. Jesus became human in the most vulnerable, helpless and powerless manner possible as a baby. Emptying himself of divine attributes, he enters into human experience and knows our sufferings (Heb. 2:18). Because of this, as the author of Hebrews drives home, Jesus is able to carry out his priestly role, supplicating for humanity because he knows through what he has learned, but also because his perfect life and divine nature gives him access to the throne of God that we ourselves lack apart from him. Empathetic care, then, must be a chief educational goal. Students must learn to care for God (reverence) and for other people (respect). Our daily work in each of our subjects must be imbued with care and devotion. We can cultivate a sense of our own priestly role in the world as caretakers of creation.

Third, Jesus, by entering into human form, entered into human structures of authority. Jesus became a child within a family, submitting himself within the hierarchy of the relationship between parents and children. Jesus at various points also recognized other authority structures, by having people he healed become cleansed by the priests (Luke 17:14), or by rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt. 22:21). We all live in hierarchies of authority, and Jesus entered into this aspect of our humanity as well. Learning the proper response to authority is an essential aspect of education. Obedience begins with self-discipline, learning to do what we ought in the face of competing desires to do what we want. But we must also learn how to obey teachers, employers, church authorities, government regulations. In order for these hierarchical relationships to work properly, roles of submission and authority have to be recognized. It is certainly the case that power and authority have been abused, and pushing back against authority in such cases can correct wrongs. But the throwing off of authority is not the normal operating procedure, it runs counter to our nature as humans. Jesus himself suffered from power wielded against him, but he still entered into our human structures. Considering who Jesus is, we can further explore this concept of authority. All authority is derived from some higher authority, a progression that eventually leads us to the authority that resides in God himself. Whatever role we think of—judge, president, teacher, parent—has a delegated or deputed authority to carry out whatever the role demands. The incarnation of Jesus Christ places the ultimate authority (God himself) within the hierarchy of authority. I think this points to something good and right about hierarchies of authority.

Fourth, human beings are soulful creatures, part of God’s physical creation, but spiritual just as He is. The temptation for those of us in education is to divide humans into physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual components. We do damage to our students, though, when cut them apart in this way. We too often appeal to the intellect without consideration of the whole person. A child properly educated grows in all ways, in every part of their being. Caring for the whole being of our students means we help them develop a personal understanding of physical conditioning, of well ordered affections, and of their spiritual nature. By solely teaching to the intellect, we ask the student to sit still, to quiet their emotions, and, yes, our lectures lack spirit. Jesus taking on human flesh shows us our multifaceted nature. Not only do we see intellect, but emotions, physicality, and, of course, spirit.

Conclusion

It is with reverence that we contemplate the mysteries of the incarnation. Too many heresies attempted to sell short Jesus’ nature without fully articulating his divinity or his humanity. This meditation on Jesus as a learner obviously highlights his human nature, but hopefully not at the expense of his full divine nature. I believe the value we gain bears fruit in understanding our own nature as image bearers. We as teachers are created in the image of God, and we teach others created in the image of God. Jesus’ incarnation, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, all are part of the plan to accomplish our redemption. Jesus’ life also provides for us principles that can guide us as educators, giving us a robust educational philosophy.

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