Disclaimer: I'm a Protestant Christian, so I'll be addressing the topics in this post from that lens.
Something that classical educators talk a lot about are the three transcendentals - Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. One day I'll do a whole series about them, but they raise some interesting dilemmas outside of their definitions. If, as many classical educators claim, the goal of education is to guide students to know truth, to do good, and to love beauty, then shouldn't it be the goal of an educator to lead children toward Christ, toward the Truth of God as seen in his Word? As a Christian, is it possible to really educate students without being able to talk about Christianity? Basically, is it possible to actually teach in a way that's consistent with Christian beliefs in a public school?
This has always been a bit of a struggle for me personally. I teach at a classical school, yes, but it's a charter school. For those not familiar with charter schools, they're essentially public schools - they're tuition-free, they receive federal and state funding, and they have to subscribe to all the rules and regulations of normal public schools - the upside of a charter school is that it has a bit more freedom than local ISD schools to choose its curriculum and its teaching methods. Still, charter schools are legally required to be secular institutions. Because I teach in a charter school I can teach how I want (classically), but I can't teach what I want (to be fair, there is no school where you can teach whatever you want).
So, if one of my main goals as a teacher is to lead students to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and if as a Christian I believe that God is the ultimate embodiment of those three things, how can I successfully teach my students and guide them toward truth, beauty, and goodness if I'm not allowed to teach Christianity explicitly?
Well, the conclusion that I've come to over the years is that it's not really possible to be a successful Christian educator in a secular school if we define success in education as instructing students in Christian values and in Christian theology. And maybe, if we assume that Christianity is actually true, a truly successful education is one that produces young men and women who can think well, speak well, love others well, and love God above all. I think, however, there's space for an excellent education to be had outside of an explicitly Chritstian context.
Christian thinkers, almost from the outset of the faith, have struggled with the question of whether it was even possible for anyone to know anything outside of the light of the Christian faith. The general answer to that question has been that there are two main categories of knowledge. There is the category of general revelation, and this includes most things that can be known - science, mathematics, history, language. This is essentilly the entire foundation of an education. The idea behing general revelation is that men are created in the image of a good God. They were created to fill the earth and subdue it. In order to fulfill this mandate men need minds that are capable of understanding and interacting with the woeld that God created. Christians and non-Christians alike, then, using the reason and sensory capacities that they have are capable of gaining real knowledge about the world we live in.
There's more to general revelation, however, than just the observations of the natural world that are the foundation of science, or the relationships between numbers that make up mathematics, or the mere facts and sequences of events of history, or the rules and intracacies of language. Even the most skeptical Christians will grant that a specialized knowledge of God is not necessary the excell in these subjects. General revelation, however, extends even to truths as important as the appreciation of beautiful things, human ethics, the existence and basic nature of a god. Don't take my word for it. Christ himself says in the Sermon on the Mount, "For he [God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," (Matthew 5:45-8). The implication of these verses is there even people who do not love and honor the Judeo-Christian God are given the grace to know what good and evil are, and are given the grace to choose to do good things in, quite frankly, a broad range on contexts. General revelation shows us the difference between truth and lies, good and evil, beauty and ugliness and our natural capacity for reason can help us seek and pursue those things.
So what, then? Can our reason tell us everything that's worth knowing on its own? Is the Bible, are Christian teaching and doctrine, just fun little add-ons to the great amount of knowledge we can amass on our own? The traditional Christian response to that would be no. The human mind, the human senses, and human reason are great gifts, but in an ultimate cosmic sense they're meaningless. The great human problem is not physical death or human suffering (and I do not say this to mitigate those problems). The great human problem is the sin we carry as individuals and as a species that consigns us to eternal separation from God. Our minds, however great they are, cannot solve this spiritual problem. In comes special revelation. Special revelation is knowledge that our reason could never give us, it is the knowledge that God Himself gives us to solve our cosmic problem. It's the most important knowledge we can ever get, by far.
So, where does that leave the Christian teacher who can't teach the faith? God has given human beings an enormous capacity to know in the arena of general revelation. The Christian teacher can teach the core subjects with just as much effectiveness as anyone else. But it's important to remember that classical education in particular is interested in training students to seek the good, the true, and the beautiful - to train their affections if I may insert a bit of jargon. There is so much space within general revelation to do this as well. Pagans as well as Christians have created great works of art, have crafted glorious songs, graceful dances, and works of literature. In short all men have the capacity to love and see beauty. Pagans as well as Christians have thought great thoughts, have had bursts of insight and flashes of genius. All men have the capacity to seek and understand truth. Pagans as well as Christians love their familes and their friends, have consciences, know to strive to do virtue and avoid vice. All men know and try to be good. All with varying rates of success.
Is it worth it to teach in a secular enviornment? Yes, but only if we really belive it when we say that we think that God is real, that God is good. We can teach students the subjects we've been given because that is a great and noble task. We can teach students to be virtuous, both in their minds and in their souls. We can teach them to believe in beauty and to long for it. And most of all we can teach them to be truth seekers. Because if God True, if he is Good, if he is Beautiful, if God IS, then those who seek after those things should find them in him.
