Education

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

Aristotle

“a think tank dedicated to the renewal of North American social architecture. Drawing on more than 2000 years of Christian social thought…”

“Cardus Education exists to provide reliable, credible data for non-government types of education.”

"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children."

Confucius

By George Durance

It seems to me that transformational education is not easily defined because the construct brings together two words which are in themselves complex and difficult to define, especially in a short sentence. How can we know that the reader or listener is bringing together the relevant underlying suppositions we have in mind to create a meaning like ours?

Education is about change, growth, and development. What happens when we qualify this with a word that implies a radical change in form? Must transformational change be dramatic and cataclysmic? Can it be in fits and starts or even incremental? Does it mean a complete change in form or is something less all-encompassing also in view? These and many other questions are on our mind and leave us shy of anything that has the appearance of being a definitive and final one-sentence definition.

Everyone seems to believe that education is the way to bring about positive change in the world. Education that makes a difference—transformational education—is a highly desirable commodity. Training, instruction and nurture are 3 dimensions of education, but having all 3 present and in balance is a lot easier said than done. This video explores what is needed for education to fulfill its promise of positive change as it becomes Transform-ED.

You can watch an Office Mix which considers various similies we use to describe what the Bible is like and their implications for Biblical integration. It is also possible to download a video of the presentation.

The PowerPoint slides were designed by Sandy Strukoff.

"Articulating and advancing a Christian philosophy for every sphere of life and thought."

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

G. K. Chesterton

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."

G. K. Chesterton

"Without a narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no purpose. Without purpose schools are houses of detention, not attention."

Neil Postman

"…the education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. Education, in a great measure, forms the moral characters of men, and morals are the basis of government. …it is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system for preserving morals, than to correct, by penal statutes, the ill effects of a bad system."

Noah Webster

“…a comprehensive consulting firm dedicated to a biblical worldview that seeks excellence to the glory of God in all areas of leadership and development in education”

By Elizabeth Youmans, Ed.D © Principia, February 2001

The battle in the twenty-first century is for the hearts and minds of our youth! That means that God’s people need a Christian mindset to defeat the enemy and move forward on the offensive. Unfortunately, most Christians around the world today have been educated in the “world’s system”…

"The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists."

R.L. Dabney

By Dr. Christian Overman in Renewanation, December 5, 2017, reprinted from Worldview Matters

I contend that not seeing this as the purpose for education is why so many pastors don't believe in Christian schools, why we lost the "culture war" in this country, and why so many young people are leaving the church. We lost the very meaning and purpose for living—and thus our purpose for learning.

By Raphael Haeuser in OnPractice, November 25, 2020

Education is an essential sphere of human life. Through it, we prepare for the marketplace, become better citizens, develop skills and competences, and form our character. Although education may not always fulfill these goals efficiently or coherently, it is nonetheless vital to the Christian faith. But in what sense can education be “Christian”?