Our Primary Purpose (part 2)
By Brett King, RMCA Principal
Each month I receive dozens of articles (and even
more advertising) about current issues in education. Not a week passes
that I don’t read or hear about an educational topic in the news.
There seems to be a never-ending flow of educational books, articles,
and websites that beckon for my attention.
I have noticed an interesting pattern in this sea of educational
literature. Most of it addresses the mechanics of schooling, yet fails
to address the mission of schooling. It answers the how questions without
first asking the why questions. There appears to be a collective loss
of memory surrounding the very purpose of schooling in the first place.
Yet, what is believed about the purpose of education has a profound
influence on the practice of education.
In the last article in this series, I proposed that RMCA’s
primary purpose as a Christian school was to partner with the Church
and home to help guide students in the process of spiritual transformation.
That is, to help students respond fully to the good news of Jesus Christ.
What was not addressed in that article was RMCA’s purpose as a
classical school. While the Christian and classical elements of our
mission are complimentary, it is important for the sake of clarity to
ask why RMCA’s founders, among the many educational approaches,
identified classical education as central to our mission. To answer
that question, we must again go back to addressing the why of schooling
before the what.
Ask the average educator in America why students are in
school and two common answers will usually emerge: (1) to prepare them
for the adult workforce; and (2) to equip them to be literate participants
in the American democracy. While these are both important, worthy purposes,
they reveal only part of the inherent dignity and full capability that
God has endowed on His children. Classical education does lay a solid
foundation for most any vocation. It also prepares capable citizens.
However, a classical education is so much more.
Dorothy Sayers, a literary colleague of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,
crafted an essay in 1947 that became the foundation for the renewal
of classical education today. Contrasting modern and ancient education
she asked,
“Is it not the great defect of our education today
that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils ‘subjects,’
we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them to think? They learn
everything except the art of learning.”
In her classical model, the mastery of various subjects
was a means not an end. Classically educated students master far more
than the “basics.” They are given the tools of inquiry (grammar),
the foundation of reason (logic), and the ability to express persuasive
and wise conclusions (rhetoric) for a much grander purpose than mere
academic literacy.
At its core, classical education seeks to equip students
to become perpetual question-askers and answer-seekers. Its aim is to
instill in students a life-long desire to be active participants in
the conversation of history by asking and responding to life’s
most important questions—questions about what is real, what is
true, what is good, and what is beautiful. Thus, the key purpose of
classical education is to transform students into passionate doers and
influencers as a result of what is discovered in the thoughtful pursuit
of these questions. Or as Romans 12:2 puts it, “…to be transformed
by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is
the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (ESV)
Acting, testing, and discerning as a result of carefully
and systematically seeking the answers to difficult questions in light
of God’s truth is why classical and Christian education compliment
each other so well. This of course is no easy task in our day. But it
certainly inspires me to labor together with you in passionately pursuing
a decisively Christian and distinctly classical education.
In his masterful work, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of
School, Neil Postman echoed this transforming purpose when he stated
school is a place “where the young should be taught to be critical
thinkers, so that they become men and women of independent mind, distanced
from the conventional wisdom of their own time and with the strength
and skill enough to change what is wrong.”
