Chronicle-1971

History testifies eloquently to the Church's interest and pioneer involvement in education. Missionaries simultaneously with the preaching ofthe Gospel,set up schools for the education of both the "converted" and "unconverted" members of the community. Indeed, education was often used as a means of reaching the "uncommitted". As a result, educational facilities were made available to a great host of people who would not have had these opportunities otherwise. There are many who look to the Church with extreme gratitude for the education that they have received. Our opening focus has been on the past. What,however,in the contemporary situation is the place of the Church in the realm of education ? Has the Church any positive position in education in today's world? Admittedly a number of Private Church Schools exist but what is their particular function? In other words, is there really a need for these institutions in the modern world? THEPURPOSEOFEDUCATION.In seeking an answer to this question it will be neces sary to begin by turning our attention to the purpose of education. The British Board of Edu cation Handbook ofSuggestions for Teachers highlights the purpose ofthe Public Elementary School as being: ...toform andstrengthen the characterand to develop the intelligence ofthe children entrusted to it and to make the best use ofthe school years available in assisting both boys and girls according to their different needs to fit themselves practically as well as intellectually for the work oflife. The British Board of Education thus sees the education process as preparation for the "work of life". It is in their interpretation of this concept that the Christian and the nonChristian educators will focus attention in different directions. The former is more inclined to view life in terms of ultimate rather than immediate destiny. He will see the possibility of meaningful learning as involving the total life of man rather than merely in terms of his career. One might ask then ifthese different viewslead to differenttypesofeducation.In onesense, there is ofcourse no such thing as Christian Education just as there is no such thing as Christian Agriculture. There is no specifically Christian technique although there are Christian values which can and should determine the choice of aims and methods and thus exert an indirect influence on technique. Values spring from our understanding of a man.The Christian's value of man comes from his recognition of the Biblical witness that man is created in the"image of God".In addition to this,that God became a Man,a real man,in the man Jesusfrom Nazareth, and that God's wish is that we too become real men.Each man is created uniquely and God's plan and purpose is that each should achieve his own full potential. PRODUCING REAL MEN.With this view of man in mind,it is obvious that nothing is to be gained by a form of education that consists of indoctrination aimed at the production of decent and often as a result docile youth. This indoctrination can of course be of either a reli gious or secular nature. An institution may see its task as the preparation of its pupils to con form to the stereotype needsof mass produced society.Thus O.P. Kretzmann,writing an article entitled "Administration in the Christian College" highlights this danger when he writes of a situation where the"Administrator becomes the boss, the chief, the employer; the teacher becomes the employee;and the student becomes the product,numbered,packaged and neatly delivered at the end of the assembly line." What a travesty of education and of the Christian's perspective of man. The Christian Private Church School should be leading the way in educating for creative citizenship in the human community with every endeavour made to enable pupils to become real men. "Is it producing real men?" becomes the criterion by which the Private Church Schools should be judged. This criterion rules out the possibility of existing for the purpose of religious indoctrination on the one hand or for the absorption of mere facts that will assure the pupil of passing satisfactorily some external examination on the other. A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY.The Private Church School is, however,in a unique posi tion toimplement an educational programme that takes seriously the possibilities ofman actualising his potential. An encounter with Christ enables one to be the man one potentially is. Yet the Private Church School stands not only in a unique but also a dangerous position. Dangerous in that it will betempted to become detached from the world around it and therefore detached from life itself. This is an even greater threat for a boarding establishment, where the school tends to become an isolated community in one of the side eddies cut off from the main stream of life. The danger faced by the Church School then is that of withdrawal from the realities of life into a cloistered existence that separates the sacred from the secular or the chapel from the classroom. Its unique opportunity is in realising that these walls of division have been broken down in the Christ who provides the occasion of an engagement with one's fellows which at one and the same time proves to be an engagement with God.It is this engagement that leads to wholeness. 51 THE PLACE OF THE PRIVATE CHURCH SCHOOL by Athol R. Jennings of the Methodist Youth Department

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