I have written several posts about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In the current political climate, I think it's fruitless to try to defend them, although I still maintain that there is much of value in them. (I'm not speaking here in support of the bureaucratic nonsense that is growing up around CCSS, nor the testing regimen being proposed, nor any liberal insanity being pushed through textbooks which claim to be "Common Core aligned." I'm just referring to the standards themselves. But I would just as soon see them dropped.
But the whole controversy is yet another example of what I have seen too much in my almost 40 years in Christian education. And I'm not just throwing stones at others here - I have done my share of this type of thinking.
Let me preface this by saying that I am committed to what theologians, particularly in the Reformed tradition (and more particularly in the Kuyperian strand of Reformed thinking), have called the "antithesis." That is, because of our belief in the total depravity of man, that the natural man can do nothing good in the eyes of God, then it stands to reason that a Christian outlook on the world is radically different from a non-Christian view of the world. And I use that term "radical" in its basic meaning - "from the root." Christians believe that the triune God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Holy Scripture is the true God, that His Word is unquestioningly true, that there is salvation in none other than Jesus Christ His Son, etc. Non-Christians believe none of these things. At root, there is a complete disjunction between these two beliefs. There is a way that leads to life eternal, and a way that leads to everlasting destruction. There is no third way.
However, that does not imply that, in this life, every individual person or every individual point of doctrine/teaching is either totally faithful to God or is totally in rebellion against Him. On this side of eternity, we are all a "mixed bag." Even though (through the power of the Holy Spirit) I am committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, I still have a great deal of indwelling sin, including in my thought life - I am not as good as my confession of faith. And the local unbeliever, even though he is at root committed to rejecting His Creator, still displays the evidence of the common grace of the Holy Spirit in his life - he is not as bad as his confession of rebellion.
All too often, Christians have acted as if anything which comes out of the mouth of an unbeliever must be wrong, just because he is an unbeliever. So, in our current example, the CCSS must be lies straight from the pit of hell because they are not explicitly based on a Christian worldview. In previous years, as head of a Christian school in another state, I set up our yearly calendar the way I thought it should be, and purposely did not align it with the calendar of the local public school system. After all, why should we Christians try to look like the world? That's an extreme example, but it flows from the same mentality - if the unbelievers do something, it must by definition be wrong.
Instead, Christians should recognize that God sovereignly grants understanding to men in spite of their unbelief. It's entirely possible that a non-Christian educator can advocate effective teaching methods, and that I can make profitable use of those methods in a Christian school.
Let me give an example of how my own thinking has changed in recent years. For many years, I believed that the Christian method of instruction was a teacher-centered approach - basically, a lecture method. After all, God comes to us and proclaims truth to us, rather than engaging in dialogue with us. And the God-ordained method of spreading the gospel is through the preaching of the Word, not asking unbelievers to discover the gospel on their own. So I (along with many other Christian educators) concluded that the use of discovery methods of learning, class discussions, group projects, and similar student-centered methods were ungodly lies from the devil.
However, I began reading research done by many educators which showed that students learned material more effectively and on a higher level if they engaged in student-centered methods such as project-based learning. This caused me to look back at Scripture afresh. Was discovery learning Satanic? Come to find out, Jesus taught His disciples through lecture (the Sermon on the Mount, for example), but He also sent them out two-by-two on a learning project; He used analogies which they had to figure out (parables); He taught them by example; etc. The Proverbs come to us in the form of riddles or puzzles to figure out. The Psalms present images which we need to interpret. God uses many ways to instruct us besides direct instruction. So shouldn't we do the same with our students?
This is one example, but there are many more. Instead of being reactionaries ("The pagans do XYZ, so we Christians must not do XYZ or anything which might look at all like XYZ"), we need to analyze non-Christian thought through the lens of Scripture and see if there are things we can glean and make use of.
Notice carefully - we must not compromise or jettison Scripture as we do this. For example, many non-Christians say that we must not engage in negative actions with students - such as using red ink to mark errors, or punishing them for wrongdoing. Instead, they say, we need to realize that children are naturally good at heart, and we need to just help them express their inner goodness. That is a direct denial of Biblical teaching, and we would not go along with it, no matter how many prominent educators might proclaim it. But not all non-Christian thought is directly in opposition to Scripture as this. Many times, unbelievers stumble across truth in spite of their beliefs. After all, the only way this world "works" at all is because it works the way God has ordained. If unbelievers find a teaching method that "works," it does so because the Lord is on the throne whether they acknowledge Him or not.
I pray that Christians (including myself) will stop simply reacting against what the non-Christian world does and will instead analyze it in the light of Scripture. Hold fast to what is good, reject what is not good, and so become even more effective Christian educators.
But the whole controversy is yet another example of what I have seen too much in my almost 40 years in Christian education. And I'm not just throwing stones at others here - I have done my share of this type of thinking.
Let me preface this by saying that I am committed to what theologians, particularly in the Reformed tradition (and more particularly in the Kuyperian strand of Reformed thinking), have called the "antithesis." That is, because of our belief in the total depravity of man, that the natural man can do nothing good in the eyes of God, then it stands to reason that a Christian outlook on the world is radically different from a non-Christian view of the world. And I use that term "radical" in its basic meaning - "from the root." Christians believe that the triune God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Holy Scripture is the true God, that His Word is unquestioningly true, that there is salvation in none other than Jesus Christ His Son, etc. Non-Christians believe none of these things. At root, there is a complete disjunction between these two beliefs. There is a way that leads to life eternal, and a way that leads to everlasting destruction. There is no third way.
However, that does not imply that, in this life, every individual person or every individual point of doctrine/teaching is either totally faithful to God or is totally in rebellion against Him. On this side of eternity, we are all a "mixed bag." Even though (through the power of the Holy Spirit) I am committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, I still have a great deal of indwelling sin, including in my thought life - I am not as good as my confession of faith. And the local unbeliever, even though he is at root committed to rejecting His Creator, still displays the evidence of the common grace of the Holy Spirit in his life - he is not as bad as his confession of rebellion.
All too often, Christians have acted as if anything which comes out of the mouth of an unbeliever must be wrong, just because he is an unbeliever. So, in our current example, the CCSS must be lies straight from the pit of hell because they are not explicitly based on a Christian worldview. In previous years, as head of a Christian school in another state, I set up our yearly calendar the way I thought it should be, and purposely did not align it with the calendar of the local public school system. After all, why should we Christians try to look like the world? That's an extreme example, but it flows from the same mentality - if the unbelievers do something, it must by definition be wrong.
Instead, Christians should recognize that God sovereignly grants understanding to men in spite of their unbelief. It's entirely possible that a non-Christian educator can advocate effective teaching methods, and that I can make profitable use of those methods in a Christian school.
Let me give an example of how my own thinking has changed in recent years. For many years, I believed that the Christian method of instruction was a teacher-centered approach - basically, a lecture method. After all, God comes to us and proclaims truth to us, rather than engaging in dialogue with us. And the God-ordained method of spreading the gospel is through the preaching of the Word, not asking unbelievers to discover the gospel on their own. So I (along with many other Christian educators) concluded that the use of discovery methods of learning, class discussions, group projects, and similar student-centered methods were ungodly lies from the devil.
However, I began reading research done by many educators which showed that students learned material more effectively and on a higher level if they engaged in student-centered methods such as project-based learning. This caused me to look back at Scripture afresh. Was discovery learning Satanic? Come to find out, Jesus taught His disciples through lecture (the Sermon on the Mount, for example), but He also sent them out two-by-two on a learning project; He used analogies which they had to figure out (parables); He taught them by example; etc. The Proverbs come to us in the form of riddles or puzzles to figure out. The Psalms present images which we need to interpret. God uses many ways to instruct us besides direct instruction. So shouldn't we do the same with our students?
This is one example, but there are many more. Instead of being reactionaries ("The pagans do XYZ, so we Christians must not do XYZ or anything which might look at all like XYZ"), we need to analyze non-Christian thought through the lens of Scripture and see if there are things we can glean and make use of.
Notice carefully - we must not compromise or jettison Scripture as we do this. For example, many non-Christians say that we must not engage in negative actions with students - such as using red ink to mark errors, or punishing them for wrongdoing. Instead, they say, we need to realize that children are naturally good at heart, and we need to just help them express their inner goodness. That is a direct denial of Biblical teaching, and we would not go along with it, no matter how many prominent educators might proclaim it. But not all non-Christian thought is directly in opposition to Scripture as this. Many times, unbelievers stumble across truth in spite of their beliefs. After all, the only way this world "works" at all is because it works the way God has ordained. If unbelievers find a teaching method that "works," it does so because the Lord is on the throne whether they acknowledge Him or not.
I pray that Christians (including myself) will stop simply reacting against what the non-Christian world does and will instead analyze it in the light of Scripture. Hold fast to what is good, reject what is not good, and so become even more effective Christian educators.