Wise School Choice: Worldview Formation
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
Everyone has a worldview, but few give thought to how it was developed. Worldview addresses what are sometimes called “ultimate questions.” These include, “Who am I?”, “How did I get here?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Where do I go when I die?”
Many people find such questions troubling because they are not sure they have the right answers or even that there are right answers. The 1966 movie “Alfie” (which I’ve not seen) addresses the secular angst. It made popular the song, Alfie which starts with an ultimate question,
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Alfie’s answer to these and other questions is an improvement over his previous views, but completely inadequate. I don’t recommend the movie, but it shows that only perennial and willful escapists can avoid ultimate questions.
The question I want to address in this post is, “How should we purposefully and wisely develop a biblical worldview?”
The prerequisite to a biblical worldview is spiritual regeneration. There are serious limits to our human perception. God graciously reveals His wisdom and power in the order and intentionality of the physical universe and all people everywhere understand this much (even though many refuse to acknowledge it—see Romans 1:18-23). If we are willing to accept this much as a starting point for our worldview, God will reveal additional truth through His written word, the Bible. The ultimate end to which this points is our need for the gift of regeneration.
All this is prelude and prerequisite. Many Christians do not have a thoroughly biblical worldview but non-Christians (the unregenerate) have no capacity for biblical thinking. (1 Cor 2:14)
For those who have been regenerated (born again), systematic prayerful study of scripture asking for illumination in bringing God’s truth to bear on our issues and experiences is key. I would never diminish this personal aspect, but there is a communal educational aspect as well.
It is not well known, but most of the oldest universities in America were founded as explicitly Christian. The founders of Harvard College in 1643 articulated their objective:
“to lay Christ in the bottome as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”
p. ix Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. 2002
Biblical worldview is the lens through which all other learning is viewed. It is the filter that allows us to discern truth from error, reality from illusion. Plantinga’s book is an excellent primer.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the the podcast, “Wise Worldview Formation.”
Intro:
Worldview is the grid composed of the central truths through which we process the physical world and create an overarching metanarrative that explains the origin and meaning of that world and our place in it.
Worldview formation begins in preschool by assimilation of the views of our parents and teachers and is refined or perhaps overthrown by our life experiences through young adulthood. Join me today as we consider the transmissibility of a biblical worldview and the ways in which your educational choices for your child aid or thwart that transmission.
In the previous podcast on school choice, I considered the primacy of pedagogy. Memorization dominates most models with understanding coming later, if at all. Worldview education often operates with the same deeply flawed methodology. In some Christian traditions the memorization of a catechism is the central element in religious education. Mastery consists in word perfect recitation of the catechism’s answer to a series of questions like “Who made you?” What else did God make?” and “Why did God make you and all things?” This can easily drift into a stimulus-response paradigm. We all know the choir boy types who spit out the catechism answers on cue and spit out their so-called faith later.
Optimal learning occurs through purposeful pattern recognition and the formation of a web of interconnected concepts. Connections are established based on understanding and not mere memorization. This should be as true of the catechism as it for physical objects and phenomena. In this environment “why” and “how” questions abound, and curiosity pursues satisfying answers to those questions. It is inevitable that some of these questions can only be answered outside of the physical realm. These are metaphysical questions.
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
A simple stereotypical example occurs when a young child asks why the sky is blue. The standard explanation invokes Rayleigh scattering, where short wavelengths of light have more energy than long ones and are scattered more when they hit gas molecules in the atmosphere. You wouldn’t use that with a young child! You might point out that in a rainbow we see that sunlight contains many colors including blue and then say that the air in the atmosphere makes the blue part of sunlight stand out. “Why” is a likely follow up question. You might try to explain a bit more, but soon, your patience exhausted, you might say, “because God made it that way” or a materialist might say “that just the way it is.” The chain of material explanation always peters out. At that point, the child is asking a metaphysical question.
Young children ask metaphysical questions even when they are too young to understand what metaphysics is!
The biblical worldview is about the interaction between an unseen realm which is more fundamental than the material realm we live in.
2 Cor. 4:18 (ESV) says believers “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” In contrast, secular society is populated with committed materialists who adamantly refuse to acknowledge the existence of this transcendent eternal realm. Carl Sagan’s famous faith dogma that, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be” comes to mind.
Romans 1 (ESV) says the physical realm overwhelmingly testifies of a Creator God Who is not part of His creation. “What can be known about God is plain to them [all people everywhere], because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Indeed, Rom 1:18 says humanity, far from ignorant, actively suppresses the truth about a transcendent immaterial God not bound by time or space.
Given the reality that early childhood is about primary conceptualization in the physical realm, it follows that the natural subsequent development of non-material concepts must not be straight jacketed by a curriculum that is materialistic and naturalistic reinforced by teachers who hew to this party line. Early childhood should be the place where awe and wonder predominate. Likewise, the sense of self as made in the image of God with a mind that transcends the physical organ of the brain and a soul that will live somewhere forever should be cultivated.
Cultivating curiosity means encouraging metaphysical questions and pointing early learners to the answers God has given by supernatural revelation in the Bible.
Many secular minded parents are sympathetic to this for very young children up to perhaps first grade. They view Bible stories as harmless classics on the order of Winnie the Pooh. Stories of David and Goliath, Noah’s Ark, etc. are fine on this level because imagination needs to be cultivated. Hard-edged reality will set in soon enough. Toleration of the Bible is surely better than intolerance, but this is not Christian education until truth is applied personally by the little one. Teachers must not press too hard for decisions, but many children readily come to faith as 4- or 5-year-olds or a bit later in early elementary school.
Before I wade into school choice options, I need to point out the manifesto for Christian education is found in Deuteronomy 6 and it is addressed directly to parents. First, they must be all in—whole heartedly committed to God themselves. Here’s an excerpt (ESV):
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
“You shall teach them diligently to your children” prescribes nothing less than an immersive teaching environment. The home is still central to educating children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. The instruction you give is not a curriculum, but a natural application of transcendent truth to everyday life. You look for opportunities to teach. Beyond that you naturally talk of the things of God when you sit, walk, lie down, and rise—which pretty much covers all of the waking hours.
Certainly, education today involves more than this spiritual life preparation for what in Bible times would probably be a trade like shepherding or carpentry. Rather, these are minimums. Whatever you do that is more than this shouldn’t be at odds with this. It doesn’t make sense to put children in a secular educational setting that will create and/or nurture doubt about God. To be sure, those questions will naturally arise in the heart and the teacher and the curriculum should point to the biblical concepts and answers.
Having been taught in public schools taught exclusively by Mormons my entire life from grades 1-12, I was regularly frustrated and confused. Only a small portion of that ever was voiced to my parents. In terms of systematic instruction, my public school had more influence and opportunity to persuade than my parents ever did. I’m not unique. It is a rare parent-child relationship that has anything like full disclosure. It’s more like this: Mom or Dad asks, “How did things go at school today?” “OK I guess.” “What did you learn?” “I can’t remember much.”
Having never experienced Christian education in grades 1-12, I was dubious about attending a Christian university which was my parent’s desire. I couldn’t put my objections into words at the time, but I think these words from Arthur Holmes captured my apprehensive misunderstanding:
“Many suppose that the Christian college exists to protect young people against sin and heresy . . . The idea therefore is not so much to educate as to indoctrinate, to provide a safe environment plus all the answers to all the problems posed by all the critics of orthodoxy and virtue.” p. 4
As a college freshman I was done with indoctrination whether it came from the public-school curriculum or the shallow species of Christianity I had experienced. Deep down I had questions and I wanted real answers.
Much to my surprise after a rocky adjustment to my Christian university, I found it to be, particularly in my major courses, a place where wrestling for understanding rather than mindless indoctrination prevailed. I found my deep metaphysical questions were being addressed as I worked to master my discipline of biology. My Dad was an aerospace engineer and a smart guy, but he was not a teacher. His answer to the few metaphysical questions I did voice growing up was to quote a few verses assuring me that was the Bible answer and that settled it. I wanted to understand, but we didn’t get very far.
As an example, I was confused about naturalistic evolution which I was taught in public school. I knew that wasn’t what the Bible said, but my teachers were pretty smart. Had I not gone to Christian university, I would have settled for the non-answer of theistic evolution, now cleverly rebranded by BioLogos as evolutionary creation. I learned as an undergraduate, more evolution than my secular counterparts and I learned what was wrong with the scientific reasoning as well as the conflicts between evolution and the teaching of scripture. When I got to graduate school in biology and interacted with students and faculty who espoused the party line that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” I was able to show them I understood supposed evolutionary mechanisms and evidence, and I had scientific reasons for continuing skepticism. I had to earn the respect of my graduate faculty who had the power to deny me a PhD.
In the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s there was great passion for starting K-12 Christian schools at enormous sacrifice to churches, faculty, and parents.
There was great optimism but substantial underestimation of what the creation of curriculum and pedagogy that were thoroughly biblical would involve. Some Christian publishers took the easy way out declaring “traditional education is Christian education.” McGuffey Readers and wholesome secular works that had gone out of print were soon hot off the presses. Other Christian publishers took a longer look, but they too struggled to get beyond the equivalent of cleaned up secular texts minus evolution and other distinctly secular elements and adding introductions or text boxes with Bible verses and moral application.
The thorough integration of scripture with standard subjects like literature, history, science, and math is still a work in progress. Breaking out of standard textbook mode (which allows a biology teacher like me to predict the content and order of most of the chapters) and actually teaching students how to think by actively developing and systematically enriching conceptual frameworks is still very much the exception.
The goal has been expressed as rebuilding the various disciplines starting from a biblical worldview.
In biology this means starting with divine creation by fiat rather than with evolution. This effort will require extraordinary scholars with deep humility before the scriptures. I have done my best to nurture younger faculty for this God-glorifying task.
Amazing (and discouraging) to me is the resurgence of Christians who unapologetically send their children to public (and secular private) schools. It is as though the battles for Christian education that would support parents in their Deut. 6 mandate never happened or are now inconsequential. One notable in this camp is Bible teacher Jen Wilkin who sends her five kids to public school. I’ll link in my blog to a debate she had with Jonathan Pennington on this issue.
Your kids may be challenged to come up with good answers for the hope that is in them through encounters in their secular school. Speaking from personal experience, however, this is usually expecting too much. Children are developing a Christian worldview, and they need spiritual nurture and instruction much more than they need to be doing daily battle, or being duped which is even worse.
I have been heartened that because of Covid, many parents saw the reality of what their kids were learning in secular schools through Zoom classrooms with their teachers. A significant minority decided this couldn’t continue and are either sending their children to some type of Christian school or have begun home schooling.
I have often been asked why there generally aren’t Christian textbooks available for use in Christian universities. The answer is multi-layered, but
the need for transformational learning is crucial for adults to nail down what they believe.
Transformational learning occurs when you experience a “disorienting dilemma” that nocks you off balance. The Apostle Paul observed in I Cor. 13:11 (ESV) “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” There has to be a time in your educational journey when you encounter worldly wisdom that usually contains a mixture of truth and error, and you learn how to ferret out the error and recast the truth in biblical terms. Heb. 5 (ESV) puts it this way: 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The result of this kind of education is set forth in I Peter 3:15 (ESV) which says we should “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Gentleness and respect include an understanding of secular reasoning that states a view we do not agree with accurately and then clearly gives arguments to show the reasoning is flawed.
I believe that robust development of a biblical worldview for those who do go to college should include an undergraduate degree from a Christian university that prioritizes the articulation and development of a biblical worldview. It’s not just that I needed it. You could argue that I went to public school and your kids are going to Christian school or being home schooled with a Christian curriculum and so they don’t need more biblical worldview. I would counter that, especially in their academic major at a secular university, your kids will be introduced to smart people who want very much to disabuse Christian students of their Christian worldview. I know this to be true in biology. All the major freshman biology texts try to talk or shock students into giving up any sympathy for divine creation in favor of a purely materialistic naturalistic evolution. Further up the academic ladder your kid will have to recite to their professor the secular party line.
Secular faculty advocate for their own worldview. They are not neutral.
To most biology faculty evolution is the central truth of biology, and your kid is not going to get a pass on believing it (or at least acting like they do). In the faculty mind to let a kid slip by would be malpractice like graduating a kid in accounting who doesn’t know how to use Excel. You can pick the major and the secular outputs which will be expected.
Not only is there academic pressure to conform, but more important, there is no opportunity to systematically consider alternatives to the secular orthodoxy. There is certainly no level playing field if you want to lay biblical worldview next to the reigning paradigm.
The result is truncated, stunted growth in worldview.
Even if there is no outward jettisoning of their biblical worldview, your son or daughter has a hole in why they believe what they believe. They might be able to remedy this as an intelligent adult who studies other authorities including Christian scholars. However, my experience as a teaching assistant at Clemson University for five years is that it is more likely that your child will be passive and compliant in the classroom and will miss the opportunity to develop a robust reason for the hope that is in him or her.
Many parents insist their kid has to go to a secular university to get a quality education with a credential that will be broadly recognized. That is a myth. Quality teaching and learning are an endangered species in secular higher education. William Deresiewicz who taught at Yale wrote Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life which is a devastating critique of Ivy League learning. Rather than reflective, inquisitive learners, Ivy league graduates fall into line with the rest of the flock of sheep uncritically adopting their mainstream elite views. As he puts it
“College is seldom about thinking or about learning; it’s mostly about achievement, mostly about success. College, in short, is training for a perpetual adolescence.”
Another critic is Derek Bok president of Harvard for 21 years who wrote Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More. Bok recognizes that institutional prestige comes from research productivity, not high-quality teaching. He says,
“Universities invest heavily in research but often neglect the quality of teaching, which is vital to student learning and development.”
The needed shift in teaching according to Bok is
“Instead of seeing students as passive recipients of knowledge, we must treat them as active participants, engaging them in a learning process that requires rigor, creativity, and self-reflection.”
It's not just Ivy League institutions. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa wrote Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses in 2011. They found
“…many students are only minimally improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing during their time in higher education.”
Specifically, 45% showed no significant improvement in these areas after two years of college and 36% still had made no real gains after four years. It hasn’t gotten better since 2011.
Secular psychologist Jonathan Haidt in a public address notably observed,
“Christian colleges are actually doing a better job of maintaining a true diversity of viewpoints and fostering an open-minded, intellectually vibrant environment where students can explore a range of ideas.”
Your child enrolled in a secular institution will likely:
lose this crucial window for developing a robustly Christian worldview
be taught a slanted perspective that privileges the current secular mainstream view
be taught by researchers who are usually poor teachers
fail to grow to be discerning
A secular education is incomplete and warped. Colossians 2 (NET) tells us that central to reality is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge 4 I say this so that no one will deceive you through arguments that sound reasonable.
8 Be careful not to allow anyone to captivate you through an empty, deceitful philosophy that is according to human traditions and the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
P.S. One more thought if you you are sympathetic to the objection that a Christian university doesn’t offer the major your kid wants (which is especially likely in technical fields like science and engineering).
Highly specialized programs for an undergraduate are a really bad idea. Such a narrow focus virtually precludes the possibility of getting the big picture of the discipline. As this essay, “Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: A Better Education?” from Nobel laureate Thomas Cech (in biochemistry/molecular biology) demonstrates,
a disproportionate share of science PhD’s are awarded to those whose undergraduate degree in science came from a liberal arts university.
Outro
I’m going to take off the month of December to spend more time with my family during this holiday season. I hope you can get both good quality and quantity time with yours as we seriously ponder the magnitude of Advent, God with us.
I’ll resume podcasting in January with a new season based on my reactions to a book by cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? The second edition came out in 2021. You might ask for a copy for Christmas. It really is a very accessible book. I’ll sometimes agree and amplify Willingham and sometimes I’ll disagree forcefully. His book is based on 10 cognitive principles of learning, how they are often violated in classrooms, and what you and your child can do to make amends.
Most of you will not have your child in an ideal learning environment and this next season will help you to make the most of where your child is, even in the bad and the ugly.
I’ll see you January 11, 2025!
Here’s a YouTube interview with Daniel Willingham talking through the ideas in the book.