Archive for christian education
Why Parents Should Attend the ACCS Conference June 21-23
Posted by: | CommentsRegents Academy is a member of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS). This organization is a great partner for our school as we seek to provide an excellent classical Christian education for our children. The ACCS national conference is in Dallas this year on June 21-23. Most of the staff and board are attending, but it will be a great conference for parents also.
I want to encourage all Regents parents to consider going. I promise: you will not regret it!
Recently ACCS listed some benefits for parents who attend:
- Insight into the differences of the classical classroom;
- Encouragement by seeing the “big picture” vision of the classical movement: i.e., we are not alone in this endeavor and we are not crazy. This reinforces the commitment to a classical and Christian education;
- Answers to questions parents are either reluctant to ask or don’t know how to ask;
- Better understanding ofthe parental role in the education process, the distinct advantages of a classical and Christian education, the Trivium and the important differences of each stage, and the need for a rigorous program of study.
If you are interested in attending or want more information, please see me. You can also visit the ACCS website at accsedu.org. We would love for a group of parents to accompany us on the trip!
The Faith, the Family, and Education
Posted by: | CommentsAt the 2011 Association of Classical and Christian Schools national conference the keynote speaker was Pastor Voddie Baucham Jr., whose book Family-Driven Faith has had a noticeable impact on many families and churches.
In the latest edition of the ACCS’s publication Classis, Pastor Baucham’s article “Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk With God” appears. His article sums up the thesis of his book and his presentations at the conference.
For Christian families interested in raising godly sons and daughters who will receive the maximum from a Christian education, this is must-reading.
Classical? Christian? Both?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat a classical education? What is a Christian education? What is the relationship between the two?
Those are three questions that continually come up. I would guess that they are questions that current Regents parents seek answers to, and they also hear them asked of them and so they need answers for others also.
Dianne Scouler at the ACSI publication Christian School Education asks these very questions and offers insightful meditations in response in her article called “Classical or Christian or Not? That Could Be the Question,” taken from the February 2011 edition.
I would encourage you to know the answer to those three questions.
On Watching Out for the Pork
Posted by: | CommentsHere is an article from the blog at DiscoverChristianSchools.com. The author reminds us of the high priority of giving our children a Christian education. In the midst of many secular schooling options, Regents Academy stands alone as the sole K-12 Christian schooling option in the Nacogdoches area.
It is always good to stop and consider the high calling of Christian education.
You Have to Watch Out for the Pork on Thursdays: The Trouble with Being Sheltered from Reality, by Mark Kennedy (this article has been slightly edited for length)
My childhood friend Bill grew up to be a respected and successful bank executive – a man who occasionally helps financial institutions beyond our borders. A few years ago while consulting for a bank in Dublin he made his temporary GHQ in a small hotel that boasted a dining room for its guests. On a Thursday evening he ambled down to this quaint eatery for a taste of Celtic cuisine not suspecting the violent conflict that would arise later in his stomach.
“I was sick all last night after eating in your restaurant!” he told the manager the next morning. “Well, what did you have for dinner?” “Roast pork!” said Bill. “Ah yes,” replied the manager philosophically in a lilting Irish brogue. “You have to watch out for the pork on Thursdays.”
You can imagine the questions in my friend’s mind after his initial shock wore off. Perhaps foremost was “Why didn’t someone tell me?!?” Sheltering someone from reality can be dangerous. And sometimes the consequences can be much more serious than a minor case of food poisoning.
Consider the effects of an education that intentionally shelters students from the most essential realities about life and living – a secular education where the daily presence of the living God is ignored and the authority and guidance of scripture is dismissed – an education that edits out the creator and sustainer of the real world.
It’s not that a secular education necessarily speaks out against the God of the Bible or openly denies the authority of the Scriptures. It simply remains silent about them. And that’s the problem. If a student from a Christian family receives a consistently secular education, how surprising can it be if he concludes that God can’t be very important? “After all, they never talk about Him at school,” he might reasonably say to himself – and his logic would be pretty hard to refute. He got the message that silence implies.
Robert Louis Stephenson expressed it plainly: “The cruellest lies are often told in silence.” So when important, even vital truths are withheld from people who desperately need to hear and experience them, Stephenson says it is a cruel deception.
The silence in secular education has implications for the way children learn, believe, think and face life’s challenges. When students are sheltered from God’s reality, they are vulnerable to the deceptions Paul warns about in Col 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” Philosophies produce actions, and actions produce consequences.
So it should be no surprise that sex education that ignores biblical standards produces ever growing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, abortions and accompanying psychological problems; that a purely mechanistic and evolutionary view of humanity convinces some students they are worthless genetic accidents so that suicide becomes a reasonable option; and that personal troubles for which secular minds have no real answers cause some students to turn to illicit drugs in a hopeless attempt to escape. The world of drug and alcohol abuse and promiscuous or perverse sexuality is so often a false refuge for people who have not been equipped to deal with the real world.
In Christian schooling we don’t shelter students from reality. We prepare students by telling them the whole truth about the real world and by honoring the presence of the source of all truth and by teaching future generations about his standards for living. As the Psalmist says, “We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power and the wonders he has done.” Psalm 78:4
In the early 1990s after Russian Communism collapsed I found myself on a team of North Americans instructing hundreds of Russian educators about how to teach the Bible to Russian public school students. Evgenity Kurkin of the Russian Ministry of Education explained why we had been invited to do that, “Seventy years ago we closed Him [God] out of our country and it has caused so many problems in our society we cannot count them. . . . We must put God back into our country, and we must begin with our children.”
And what about the future cost for North American students, especially those from Christian homes, who have been sheltered from the realities that matter most for living now and for the life yet to come?
Yet Another Contrast
Posted by: | CommentsHere is yet another contrast between two views of man.
If the first statement is true, would the nurture and education of our children have a real purpose? If the latter is true, would anything else matter?
“The plight of man is pitiable. We are wanderers in a vast universe, helpless before the devastations of nature, dependent upon nature for food and other necessities, and uninformed about why we were born and what we should strive for. Man is alone in a cold and alien universe. He gazes upon this mysterious, rapidly changing, and endless universe and is confused, baffled, and even frightened by his own insignificance.” Morris Kline, 20th C. mathematician and historian
“In the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His divine plan. Nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its particular fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His praise. This is the Old Testament (as well as the New Testament) philosophy of the universe — a world view which attains concrete unity in an absolute decree, or Purpose, or plan, of which all that comes to pass is but its development in time.” Benjamin B. Warfield, 20th C. theologian
Cosmic Hiccup or Crown?
Posted by: | CommentsIt matters a great deal how we answer this question: What is man?
Is humanity merely a cosmic hiccup, the result of random forces with no real purpose or destination? Or is man a special being created in the image of God for a unique purpose in the world?
The dividing line between these two views is displayed sharply in the following two quotes:
“The universe has turned its face against man; it was bored with him and man will eventually die out like the dinosaurs and be forgotten.” H.G. Wells, author and historian (20th century)
“What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.” Psalm 8:4-6
Adopting either view has enormous implications — for oneself, for the family, for society and public policy, and for education.
Vision for a Graduate
Posted by: | CommentsWe envision that a graduate of the academic program at Regents Academy will embody the following traits:
• Virtue and mature character: This includes heart-obedience rather than mere rule-following, good manners, honorable relationships, self-control, and Christian leadership. If nothing else, students should live in accordance with Coram Deo—living as though they were in the presence of God at all times.
• Sound reason and sound faith: We expect students to realize a unified Christian worldview with Scripture as the measure of all Truth. We expect them to exhibit the wisdom to recognize complex issues and to follow the consequences of ideas.
• Service to others: We expect our graduates to “love their neighbor” by serving others in their community. Graduates need to develop an awareness of the many types of needs that others around them have and learn to be like Christ in their willingness to minister to others.
• A masterful command of language: Because language enables us to know things that are not directly experienced, nothing is more important within Christian education. Without a strong command of language, even Scripture is rendered mute. As people of “the Word,” Christians should be masters of language. Students master vocabulary, grammar, usage, and translation through our study of Latin, English, and Spanish.
• Well-rounded competence: Educated people are not specialists who know little outside of their field of specialty. Educated people have competence in a variety of areas including fine arts, drama, music, physical activity, history, math, logic, science, and arithmetic. Throughout our program, skills essential for an educated person are introduced and developed.
• Literacy with broad exposure to books: Educated people are well-read and able to discuss and relate to central works of literature, science, art, architecture, and music.
• An established aesthetic: Further, educated people have good taste, formed as they are exposed to great aesthetic masterpieces, particularly at a young age.
The 7 Laws of Teaching, Part 3
Posted by: | CommentsHere are some observations about the use of Gregory’s Seven Laws of Teaching:
• These principles underlie all good teaching. The teacher may use them unconsciously, but they are still present because they are inherent and inescapable. To use them often, in themselves, brings about good order.
• The principles are applicable to all teaching, regardless of grade level, since they are fundamental conditions on which ideas may pass from person to person. University… elementary school…home school…school classroom…math and English: they are applicable in all settings.
• Skill does not replace enthusiasm, making teaching cold and mechanical.
• There is no special key that will enable a teacher to open a student’s mind, look in and plant knowledge there, but in the laws of teaching a teacher has lines of communications common to our nature by which they may awaken their students’ ability to receive and embrace what they are teaching.
The 7 Laws of Teaching, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsNow here are Gregory’s Seven Laws of Teaching restated as rules for teachers:
1. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach – teach from a full mind and a clear understanding.
2. Gain and keep the attention and interest of the pupils upon the lesson. Do not try to teach without attention.
3. Use words understood in the same way by the pupils and yourself – language clear and vivid to both.
4. Begin with what is already well known to the pupil upon the subject and with what he was himself experienced – and proceed to the new material by single, easy, and natural steps, letting the known explain the unknown.
5. Stimulate the pupil’s own mind to action. Keep his thought as much as possible ahead of your expression, placing him in the attitude of discoverer, an anticipator.
6. Require the pupil to reproduce in thought the lesson he is learning – thinking it our in its various phases and applications till he can express it in his own language.
7. Review, review, review, reproducing the old, deepening its impression with new thought, linking it with added meanings, finding new applications, correcting any false views, and completing the true.
The 7 Laws of Teaching, Part 1
Posted by: | CommentsHere are John Milton Gregory’s Seven Laws of Teaching:
1. A teacher must be one who knows the lesson or truth or art to be taught.
2. A learner is one who attends with interest to the lesson.
3. The language used as a medium between teacher and learner must be common to both.
4. The lesson to be mastered must be explicable in the terms of truth already known by the learner – the unknown must be explained by means of the known.
5. Teaching is arousing and using the pupil’s mind to grasp the desired thought or to master the desired art.
6. Learning is thinking into one’s own understanding a new idea or truth or working into habit a new art or skill.
7. The test and proof of teaching done – the finishing and fastening process – must be a reviewing, rethinking, reknowing, reproducing, and applying of the material that has been taught, the knowledge and ideals and arts that have been communicated.
