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Introduction
Education is the most important asset of a nation since it equips individuals to be productive members of the society. In addition to the skills gained by students through education, character is also developed through education. Education is used to instill ideals in the mind of children and this ideals influence the future character of the individual.
Traditionally, the education system in the country derived its values from the Christian religion. However, as the system progressed and the nation developed, a trend in favor of secular education emerged. The secular system differs significantly from the Christian system since while Christian education is based on Christian values secular education avoids any religious ideologies and values and morality are separated from religion.
The US educational system is secular in nature and it promotes secular attitudes and values through its curricula. The rationale behind a secular system is that in any Government system catering for the needs of different races and creeds, education should be neutral. Even so, parents have the discretion to choose if they want to provide their children with a Christian education.
This can be achieved though enlisting the child in Christian private schools or homeschooling them. This paper will set out to advocate for Christian values in children’s education by demonstrating that a Christian based education is the most beneficial for the child.
The paper will highlight the role that parents can play in promoting Christian education in the country and how the church can make an impact in the secular education system.
Secular Education and Christian Education
Education is a fundamental component for the development and ultimate advancement of the society. The type of education offered matters since it determines the kind of individuals that society produces. Secular education is defined as a system of education where secular values are adopted and all connections between teachings and religion removed (Jackson 250).
The American education system is based on the principle of secularism, which calls for a strict separation of church and state. Public schools are therefore institutes where expression is given to republican values and no particular religious convictions are endorsed by the school.
Christian education is an education provided with Christian doctrine playing a central role in the education process. The Christian education aims to teach students to think, judge, and act according to strict Christian rules (Sampson 91). These two systems of education have some significant similarities and differences
Similarities
Both Christian and Secular education hope to develop a moral outlook in the students. The two systems have some common values that they hope to inculcate in the children. Values such as humanity, truthfulness, honesty, tolerance, and selflessness are emphasized by both systems.
Sampson declares that Christian education seeks to impart the values of love and honesty and therefore create individuals who have high integrity (74). The same is true for the secular education system, which aims at forming a noble character of man and develop individuals who will exhibit high integrity at all times. Both systems of education therefore strive to develop morally upright individuals.
The two education systems are grounded in the democratic values upheld by the country. Democracy dictates flexibility and inclusion in decision making for all members of the society and these are values upheld by both the Christian and the secular system. Secular education encourages the development of democratic qualities such as liberty and equality for all people.
Christian education also encourages liberty and advances that all people are equal under the eyes of God (Sampson 74). Secular education exhorts the values of the democratic system in contrast to the authoritarian system. This education emphasizes that each person has a right to be heard and people should have equal rights. Christian education does the same and it emphasizes on each person being treated with dignity.
Christian thought is in fact the basis of declaration that “all men are created equal” and that ordinary people matter. The Christian believe that all people are equal in the eyes of God makes Christian education strongly democratic in nature. Advocates of secular education assert that freedom from religion is essential to ensure equality for all.
Pike notes that this is a misguided notion since having a Christian ethos in schools does not infringe on the rights of any individual (143). In addition to this, it is freedom to practice religion that has resulted in the many rights that American’s enjoy today.
Both systems do not discriminate against students based on their gender, race, social background, or religion. Secular education is structured in such a manner that it is all-inclusive and students from differing backgrounds can learn under one uniform environment. Christian education is also open to all students and there is no faith-test for admission of students.
Pike reveals that while Christian schools are based on traditional beliefs and teach Christian values to the children, students are not denied a chance to join this system even if they come from different religions. Christian education is not necessarily exclusive and students of all faiths can be included in the system since it seeks to foster virtuous behavior and not to impose the religious truth claims of Christianity on young people.
Differences
A significant difference between the two systems is that secular education hopes to cultivate a pluralistic outlook while Christian education stresses on there being only one correct view, which is God’s view. Because of its pluralistic orientation, secular education encourages students to entertain the notion that there might be more than one version of the truth and as such, the truth is relative in certain matters such as religion.
Such an outlook fosters tolerance and harmony in our multicultural society. Students are taught to accept that there exist alternative approaches to most issues in life and one should be open minded enough to consider alternatives that are alien to them. The Christian education system strongly opposes the pluralistic outlook especially with regard to religion.
This system teaches that the only correct view is one that is consistent with the will of God and the biblical teachings, which act as a guide on Christian living. Christian education asserts that the difference between right and wrong can only be construed through reference to biblical teachings (Apple 55). Students are therefore taught to give emphasis to this religion-based outlook in all aspects of their lives.
Another major difference between the two systems is with regard to their perception of humanitarianism. For secular education, the aim is to create individuals who embrace and actively practice humanitarianism. In this context, humanitarianism is the promotion of human welfare and alleviation of human suffering.
The humanitarianism advanced by secular education is supposed to foster universal brotherhood and promote peace. Values of self-sacrifice and services to others are emphasized on in order to bring about the betterment of society.
Secular humanitarianism is devoid of any religious orientation. Christian education proposes that good deeds cannot make the world a better place and it is only by following the teachings of Christianity that the world can be made whole.
Concern for human welfare that is not based on Christian teachings cannot lead to any long-term improvement of human welfare (Pike 143). Christian education therefore rejects the secular notion that benevolent and philanthropic actions can make the world a better place.
Sampson articulates that the Christian and secular worldviews shape the child in profoundly different ways (74). Secular Education promotes political and commercial forces and generally exalts the capitalistic system. The materialist outlook that prevails in the public is promoted in public schools in the US. Pike notes that the secular system has maintained a “deafening silence about spiritual or anti-materialist values” (141).
Christian education on the other hand teaches strong anti-materialism values. From its biblical basis, Christian education teaches students not to be too concerned about gaining material possessions at all costs. Christian education underscores the fact that the materialist ethos advanced by secular education is to blame for the exploitation and selfishness that currently plagues the society.
Secular education tries to teach only those values that can be agreed upon by a diverse culture. Advocates of such a system argue that shared values that allow people to engage in a pluralist society should be emphasized while the values that are divergent should be ignored (Pike 141).
Glanzer notes that the common virtues taught by secular education are ineffective since they avoid narratives for defining, understanding and applying these virtues hence rendering them empty (300). Secular education therefore suffers from a limited approach to moral education since it does not endorse a particular comprehensive vision of the good for individuals (Jackson 250).
This has resulted in an insufficiency of moral authority by secular schools. Christian education bases its values on the teachings of the bible. Reliance on the bible, which is regarded as a holy text by the Christian community, gives Christian education sufficient moral authority.
Secular education takes on a value neutral approach and the schools do not have any religious affiliations. The mission statements adopted by schools that practice secular education are universal in nature and refrain from any religious sentiments. These schools maintain a secular ethos and they ensure that no religious viewpoint is actively propagated in the institute.
Bible readings, devotional lessons, and moral teachings are absent from the secular system which emphasizes on a religion neutral education. Christian schools acknowledge a specific linkage to a church or claim a religious heritage through their mission statement. The explicit religious goals strived for by most schools are to create a climate that is consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ and practice these teachings in school activities.
Parents Role in Promoting Christian Education
Parents and guardians play a significant role in the education of the children since they are the individuals who dictate the type of education system that the child is going to enjoy. These influential parties can play a major role in ensuring that Christian education is given to their children.
Secular education imposes a world-view that is at times incompatible with the religious views that the children hold. Parents have the choice to reject this form of education and choose Christian Private schools or homeschooling. By choosing these options, parents can ensure that their children are exposed to an education where Christian teachings are woven into every aspect of knowledge (Apple 30).
Secular education is ill suited for children who are still trying to establish their religions roots. Glanzer reveals that secular education endeavors to actively diminish the importance of religion in the social life of the students and diminish religious commitments among the children as they are prepared for life in a secular society (295).
Christian schools provide an environment where young Christians can be protected in their early years so that they can grow and be strong enough to face the secular world on their own. The schools ensure that the child gets some basic character strongly established before joining the secular environment.
Through their individual efforts, parents can take up homeschooling and ensure that children receive education that has a Christian basis from an early age. Parents can also coordinate with other parents to increase their rights to choose the form of education they want their children to enjoy. In the past decade, parents have been instrumental in ensuring that the right to home school is guaranteed by the law in many states.
They have done this through advocacy at the regional and national levels and intensive lobbying (Apple 23). Because of these efforts, home schooling is on the rise with more parents rejecting organized public schools in favor of this system.
Apple documents that 1.7 to 2.1 million students (2.2% of school age children in the US) are being home schooled and the growth curve is increasing (22). The home schooling population is dominated by conservative Christians demonstrating the role that religion plays in causing parents to reject the public secular system.
Parents can choose to send their children to Christian schools since this schools have values that increase student success. Research demonstrates that faith schools have an academic advantage that is attributed to school atmosphere, racial harmony, high discipline, absence of school violence, and increased amount of time spent on homework (716).
As more parents remove their children from the secular public institutions and enroll them in private Christian schools or engage in home schooling, the percentage of children provided with a sound Christian based education will increase. This will lead to a future generation that will uphold religious values and change the world so that Christian education is once more in the mainstream of society.
Parents can add their voice to the debates over social and educational policies and ensure that the practices adopted by the state are compatible with their beliefs. Specifically, parents can advocate for greater governmental support for religious education by demonstrating that a significant number of parents are in support of this education.
The extent to which states should endorse faith schools as part of publicly funded schooling has been a source of debate and dispute with the US government providing no funding for faith schools. Instead, public education that is secular in nature has been the main beneficiary of government funding.
Parents can advocate for the inclusion of religious schools in the government funding program. Karsten observes that without financial support from the government, it is difficult for private groups to maintain a school (26).
They therefore end up charging high-school fees, which makes it difficult for low income parents to put their children though such schools. Without resulting to high-school fees, it is impossible for the schools to be well furnished and for teachers to be afforded decent salaries.
Such advocacy can result in the state providing education with a religious character since the state should be able to provide religious education for which there is a demand. For example, the German constitution allows the federal state to provide education with a religious character (Karsten 25).
As such, publicly run schools might have a religious character that conforms to the wishes of parents and guidelines given by the relevant churches. This will increase the resources at the disposal of religious school and hence increase their ability to provide quality services to the students.
Church’s Role in the Secular Education System
While having all children enroll in private schools with a religious background or be homeschooled would be desirable, it is not an achievable goal. As it currently stands, majority of the students are in the secular education system. Therefore, for Christian values to play a significant role in the education of children in this country the church has to be involved in the secular education system.
The church can play a major role in reforming moral education in the secular education setting to ensure that high moral ideals are inculcated in the children. Pike correctly observes that all knowledge must rest on a foundation and this foundation cannot be value neutral (139). Most of the values cherished by the members of the society come from their religious traditions and beliefs.
Attempts by the secular system to provide an education that is value natural are therefore flawed since education must be a reflection of the society. The church can continue advancing good Christian values to children who are in the secular system.
The church can increase its advocacy to ensure that it is included in the formulation of the school curriculum even in the secular setting. By definition, the curriculum is “a program of activities designed so that pupils will attain, as far as possible certain educational ends and objectives” (Taylor and Johnson 23).
The curriculum dictates the content that will be taught to the children and therefore has significant influence in the education system. There is real danger of children being indoctrinated with whatever ideas the makers of the curriculum want to advance. The current US school curriculum promotes secular values and the lessons in textbooks are free from religious thoughts.
By having a say in the contents of the curriculum, the church can exert some influence into what the children are taught. The church can reject subject matter that is contrary to Christian principles and therefore help shape the lives of children in the secular system.
The secular education system can benefit from values that belong to the Christian religion. The secular system will suffer great disadvantages if it ignores core values just because they are inspired by the Christian religion.
Pike states that secular educators need to adopt a greater degree of honesty with regard to values founded in the Christian tradition in order for secular students to benefit from such values (153). If this happens, the students will be well prepared for their role as good citizens in the secular society.
A Christian ethos will provide schooling that is good for children even in an institute that practices secular education. This ethos challenges people to give something to society, look to the interests of others, and be prepared to make a positive contribution in their personal lives and the community. Secular education pursues a rigorous values neutrality ethos in the interest of preserving the freedom and rights of their citizens.
Lovat suggests that values neutrality is necessary of the overall betterment of students including for their academic attainment (714). This suggestion is refuted by research, which demonstrates that Christian education that stresses on quality character results in academic gains by the students (Pike 153).
These findings are corroborated by Glanzer who reveals that values are elementary to human flourishing and they are fundament to students’ well-being in the school setting (293). The church can promote Christian ethos in schools regardless of their secular philosophy.
Teachers play a crucial role in the education since they are relied on to impart knowledge to the students. The personal values and principles adopted by teachers significantly influence how they go about teaching. The church can try to influence teachers in the secular system to adopt Christian values and make use of some of the practices used by teachers in the Christian system.
Lovat reveals that teachers in faith schools consider it part of their mission to model positive values to students and to take an interest in their lives (715). Teachers can be provoked to adopt an interest in students without compromising the values of the secular system. This will result in children benefiting from teaching values that have their roots in Christianity even in the secular system.
Church’s Role in Bridging the Gap in Educating
A significant gap exists between secular and Christian based education. Byrne warns that “Western culture is on a fast slide into moral decay and numbness” (41). This is not an idle warning considering the sensual practices adopted by the young generation and lack of civility in the public conveyances. Young people have little respect and all restraints are being listed as morality and ethics are replaced by materialistic tendencies.
Bridging this gap is integral to ensuring that the future moral development of our children is guaranteed. Education has always been used by the US as a means of transferring a set of national norms and values to the population (Karsten 29). If these norms and values are to be of a Christian nature, the church needs to play a major role in bridging the gap that currently exists.
The church can increase the supply for educational material that has a biblical basis through its publishing houses. It can subsequently encourage all Christians to purchase these materials and use them in the education of their children.
Such a move will ensure that children are introduced to biblical values and principles even as they engage in their course material. As the demand for such learning materials increases, non-church based publishers can be expected to come in and supply the demand for the market with the aim of making a profit.
The church can make use of other venues apart from the classroom to instill Christian values and morals in children. For example, the church can use the Sunday school as an important venue for instructions to the young and impressionable children (Byrne 123).Sampson warns that the secular moral outlook ingrained in children by secular education lacks the authority that Christian moral teachings possess (75).
Children who grow under a secular system therefore exhibit lower moral values and this leads to the prominence of immorality in our country. By using social events and the church building as platforms to promote Christian morality, the church can help mitigate the harm that secular values have caused on our society.
The Christian education advocated for by the church places central significant on character formation in young people. It does not result in the indoctrination of children to make them follow Christianity.
Instead, the system provides an education that enables the individual student to make his/her own decisions about Christianity (Pike 146). Children of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds can therefore benefit from this education system.
The Church should engage in measures to help strengthen Christian institutes. Educators and policy makers are always on the lookout for the most effective form of education because effective education leads to positive outcomes for the public. As it currently stands, religious schools are feeling the pressure to become more like their secular counterparts.
This pressure comes from the assumption that religious based education is automatically inferior. Lovat declares that time has come to rethink the premise that secular education is the best considering the many positive outcomes attributed to religious based education by research (720). There should therefore be increased advocacy for religious education, which has proved to be superior to secular education.
If all this measures are taken up, it is possible that religious education will be open to society and the connection between religion and society life will become more obvious for everyone. Such a connection will result in Christian teachings being used to build the character of the children.
Discussion
Without the input of the church, the American public will quickly evolve into a society that is devoid of a comprehensive moral culture. This is an undesirable outcome and it should be prevented by the church at all costs. Significant resources have been dedicated to the promotion of secular education in the country over the decades.
Even so, Christian education is slowly regaining a foothold in the country with more parents enrolling their children in Christian private schools in the past few decades. By sticking to some of the traditional Christian values, Christian schools are offering more of what parents are looking for and hence becoming increasingly popular.
Faith and belief are important attributes in the lives of many people. They should therefore be a key part of the education that children receive. Pike asserts that of all faiths, traditional Christianity was the most “radical, egalitarian and inclusive, smashing down all barriers between people, and even the barrier between individuals and God’’ (152).
These qualities are still desirable today and the secular society should stop trying to avoid an exploration of the sources of the core values and morals that our nation was built on.
The American society is viewed as sufficiently secular to require the absence of religious identity in academic institutes. However, there is no correlation between secularization and strong academic performance by the institute. Christian education should therefore be allowed to flourish in the nation since Christian values are still applicable in a secular culture.
While separation of church and state is desirable in the multicultural world that we live in, the church should not be divorced from all faucets of life. The United States can still maintain its position as an important protagonist of multiculturalism while supporting Christian education. Values advocated for by the church should therefore be incorporated in the education sector for the good of the society.
Conclusion
This paper set out to demonstrate how the church could advocate for private schools and homeschooling to the parents and public. It began by defining secular and religious education and giving a comparison of the two systems. The paper has demonstrated that the relationship between being a good citizen and faith is too strong and it should therefore not be ignored by our education system.
While the secular system is grounded in the noble goal by the secular government to treat fairly and equally all its children, the system has led to a breakdown in the values and morality of the children and therefore caused greater harm to the society.
In an effort to obliterate the differences of creeds, secular education empties morality of its substance and depth. Christian education will be integral to the creation of character and producing diligent leaders for our country.
The paper has demonstrated that schools can become first-rate academic centers while at the same time maintaining their faith traditions. Providing a Christian outlook and morality will be beneficial to the character formation of the children.
Works Cited
Apple, Michael. “Education and Godly technology Gender, Culture, and the Work of Home Schooling.” Social Analysis. 50.3 (2006): 19-37. Web.
Byrne, Herbert. Challenging Concepts for Contemporary Christian Education, Texas: Xulon Press, 2003. Print.
Glanzer, Paul. “Did the moral education establishment kill character? An autopsy of the death of character.” Journal of Moral Education. 32.3 (2003): 291–306. Print
Jackson, Robert. Religion and Education in Europe: Developments, Contexts and Debates, Berlin: Waxmann Verlag, 2007. Print.
Karsten, Sjoerd. Freedom of Education and Common Civic Values, Paris: Academic Press, 2006. Print.
Lovat, Terence. “Values education as holistic development for all sectors: researching for effective pedagogy.” Oxford Review of Education. 36.6 (2010): 713–729. Web.
Pike, Mark. “The value of Christian-ethos schooling for secular students.” Journal of Research on Christian Education. 20.1 (2011): 138–154. Print.
Sampson, Robin. The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach: Bible Based Homeschooling, Boston: Heart of Wisdom Publishing Inc, 2005. Print.
Taylor, Paul, and M. Johnson. Curriculum Development, New York: NFER, 1974. Print.
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