Kent Ezell in the March 10, 2022 CACE Roundtable has some suggestions about how to document the faith development of students. A few examples are given of the kind of student reflections that could be done in the classroom and then teachers are encouraged to collect these in a variety of electronic forms to provide evidence that a Christian school is making a difference in the lives of their students. The suggestions are good and could encourage the teacher and the students who contribute to an on-going portfolio. My first impression was quite positive, but as I thought about the article, I had a couple of questions about the suggested use of such a journal to convince prospective parents that students grow in their faith at the school.
Leonard Sax in The Epoch Times, 2021-08-21, asks an important question for every parent, "Which school is the best school for your child?" He points out that most patents tend to define the "best" schools in relation to the kind of universities that their graduates attend. However, he then looks at the research of the past 40 years. In the 1980's the "common sense" expectation was that attending schools in low-income communities increased risk for substance abuse, anxiety, and depression. In the late 1990's it was found that the results "had flipped" so that affluent kids were now at higher risk than low-income kids. More recent research has found that risk associated with affluence doesn't come from the household income itself, but from the type of school that they attend. "High-achieving schools connote risks for adolescents" seems counter-intuitive, but constant comparison with others and measurement of self-worth by accomplishments creates a toxic environment that hinders long-term success. Followers of Christ should not be surprised that prioritizing character and conscientiousness over performance produces the best chance of graduates being healthy and happy decades after graduation.
Glenn Schultz writes in his Kingdom Education Ministries blog about how a conference challenged him that "the education we give the next generation must be built on a strong biblical worldview and a biblical philosophy of education. This must be a reality at home, church and school." Research was presented by Dr. George Barna that the most dominant worldview among young Christians is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, "a very dangerous belief system that too many Christians live their lives by."
Schultz concludes that "we cannot afford to be simply 'better' than secular schools. Christian schools must not take a secular model of schooling and merely Christianize it with Bible classes and chapels."
John Dickson has an undeceptions podcast with historian, Tom Holland, who has written, Dominion: The making of the Western Mind. The popular perception is that "Christianity thrives on ignorance, sunk us all into the dark ages, and has resisted human rights and equality for most of its 1500 year reign" so we ask, "What have the Christians ever done for us?" Although Holland is not a believing Christian, he reckons "many of us have things completely back to front. It's Christianity," he insists, "that gave us many of the secular humanitarian ideals we hold so dear."
In Mercatornet, June 29, 2021, Jonathan Van Maren shares his interview of Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute. Ferguson's reflections on his personal journey, as well as the journey of other public intellectuals like Roger Scruton, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson, is fascinating. One of Van Maren's conclusions is, "Viewing Western civilisation with its Christian soul cut out, many are now willing to say: “We need Christ.” What they are unable, thus far, to say, is: “I need Christ.”
Page 5 of 8
By 
By