I recently read an article entitled “Five Temptations for Classical Christian Education,” written by Brian Douglas, a teacher at the Ambrose Classical School in Boise, Idaho and adjunct professor at Boise State University.  The entire article is worth reading, and there are many pieces that I would love to discuss, but these two paragraphs really stood out to me:

“It is easy for a classical Christian school to become known more for its uniforms, homework expectations, strictness, and the like, than for its gracious, loving environment. Yet we ought not treat education like a simple input-output situation, in which the right learning environment can program our students to be Christians. While students do need high expectations for their work and conduct, focusing on order becomes hazardous when it overtakes the joy of experiencing God’s grace. When this happens, students may learn to jump through the hoops, obey the rules, do the right things, but they do not learn to love God and others. That is moralism, the worst enemy of true Christianity.

“Creating a truly gracious classroom is much harder than creating an orderly classroom. It is a challenge that requires spiritual preparation far beyond classroom management techniques. But the only Christian education is a thoroughly gracious education. It sounds so basic, but it remains true: Without God’s grace, we can only produce narcissists who are more focused on their own successes and failures than on the eternal reality of God’s love for his people.”

My temptation is to read something like this and say, “YES!  So well stated!” then walk away with this abstract ideal in my head: “the truly gracious classroom.”  I can then easily leave this definitive characteristic of the Christian classroom at the philosophical level.

But what does this really mean in practice?  What does a “truly gracious classroom” look like?  How do our students encounter this “joy of experiencing God’s grace” in our classrooms?”

And to make these questions more pointed, let’s get even more specific.  Take assessment, for example.  What does it look like to be gracious in the assessment of our students?  How do we maintain rigor and high expectations while at the same time give grace?  Should rigor and grace be opposed?  Is allowing a student to retake a test a demonstration of true grace?

Douglas cautions us against moralism, against teaching our students to “jump through the hoops.”  And I have seen these moralistic acrobatics in my students in the past.  Heck, I have held the hoops up for them.  Lord forgive me.

But can grace also be dispensed to our students’ detriment?

I am not going to attempt to answer any of my own questions in this post.  Maybe because it’s almost midnight, maybe because I don’t have good answers.  But I would love to hear your thoughts.

More in a later post . . .