Readers, thank you for your patience in recent weeks - it has been an intense time of ministry at church and activity in home life, hence writing fell to the back burner. But here is part two of my series on Christian free schools. There are only four questions here, that focus on principles rather than practise, but I hope that there is the essence of response to most questions embedded somewhere within these musings. Please feel free to ask me any other questions in the comments section.
Should churches be spending their time establishing free schools when there are so many other core ministries to focus on?
This question is really a question about the doctrine of the local church – what should its activities encompass and exclude? For centuries, the church has seen education as within its remit, under the biblical exhortations of both discipleship (providing an environment for children to develop a Christian mind) and neighbour-love (providing a truly loving educational option to those outside the church as well as within). It also speaks of a mindset that embraces Christ’s Lordship over all rather than over just a delineated ‘spiritual’ field of existence. So while a church can’t offer an effective education ministry without core teaching, fellowship and pastoral ministries in place, free schools should not be considered as a distraction form these things, but as a blossoming of the holistic mission of the local church.
Shouldn’t the state determine how its people are educated?
It has been interesting in the current debate surrounding same-sex ‘marriage’ that the question of ‘who owns marriage?’ is being asked and discussed. This follows a vacuous silence on the issue of the origin of morality and right in UK, the unspoken assumption being that it is the elected assemblies of state governance that author such matters, expressed through law. This is highly disturbing, as by assuming the state has the right to dictate the moral narrative, one hands those in government carte blanche for totalitarianism at the deepest level – the human and the moral. To avoid such a moral fascism, the source of right must be seen to be either God (for the theist) or some higher, universal-human, inherent code of right (for the atheist/humanist), under which governments must be subservient. Thus for a state to assume the right to define marriage is tyranny – it is an institution fundamental to humanity that stands above culture, ethnicity and democratic whim. The same principles apply to education – the state’s involvement in education is to be warmly welcomed where the instruction is shaped by truth and right, but when the state assumes to define what these are we have intellectual (and hence educational) tyranny. Of course, there are a vast array of parental groups with different views on how ‘truth’ and ‘right’ are to be expressed, which is the beauty of Free Schools – those convicted of the need for education to be founded on ‘higher’ (i.e. those beyond human authorship) principles have the freedom to do so. So while state education is to be warmly welcomed, insistence by the state on the right to educate every child in the realm in the way it sees fit rather than respecting parental right is to be fiercely resisted, especially when the education offered has a faulty notion or no notion of transcendent right.
Won’t establishing Christian schools create further social division?
This is a searching question, to which I would make four points. Firstly, social division has roots that are far deeper than the curriculum taught at schools. Thus it is an easy way out of facing wider social problems to point the decisive finger at schools. But this is not to say that certain curriculae don't exacerbate social divisions- witness the varied shades of fundamentalist schools that flourish globally. So the question has to weigh the curriculum itself, thus asking ‘does a Christian-founded education create social division?’, to which the answer is (or at least should be) is no. So, secondly, Christian education is a source of social unity, not division. How so? Primarily because the ethic of Christianity is peace not war, servanthood rather than self-assertion, love not hate, setting humans united under God rather than divided against each other, for social harmony and not discord. The list could continue. There is so much truth in the adage that ‘if you surrender the Fatherhood of God you quickly lose the Brotherhood of Man’, the loss of which inevitably leads to social division. Thus a truly Christian education is the best hope for social unity. Thirdly, Muslim and Sikh groups have accelerated out of the blocks far faster than Christian groups in the Free School stakes, and thus if one takes the view that ‘religious’ schools cause division, then it isn’t the small number of Christian Free schools that should be one’s primary concern. Fourthly, Christian schools are unlikely to receive government approval unless their admission policies include a significant proportion of place-selection to be awarded to non-churched families – in the case of our church’s proposed school that figure is 50%. So the idea that such schools would become church ‘ghettos’ detached from their communities and uninvolved in wider social transformation is a fallacy. In short, Christian schools will largely be founded for the good of all and open to all, not just for a few well connected well-to-do church folk.
Won’t more Christian schools lead to a flight of Christian teachers from LEA-run state schools leading to a further secularising of those institutions?
This is an acute and sensitive question, but one to which again I think the answer is no. How so? Firstly, Free Schools are released from normal recruitment policies of LEA-run schools, meaning that anyone (subject to rigorous checks of course) can be employed as a teacher – they do not need a teaching qualification. So while Christian Free Schools are likely to employ those who share their ethos, this doesn’t automatically mean the source of such teachers are Christians in LEA-schools. Secondly, many teachers I know teach in LEA schools to be ‘salt and light’ and serve their communities, so the idea that they will all run away to free schools is an affront to their dedication and commitment. Thirdly, even if there is some shifting of teachers from LEA to free schools, all the evidence has shown that having a strong centre of Christian education in an area is to the health of all Christians involved in education, regardless of whether they are based within or outside that centre. Having said all that it is vital that churches involved in free schools do not fail in their duty to equip, disciple and encourage teachers in all schools, otherwise the above observations become meaningless in practise.
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