At Canterbury, we believe that teaching is a ministry and office of the church and ask for God’s blessing on our teachers at the start of each year.
At this annual event, our teachers renew their promises to faithfully teach the Scriptures and live as wholesome examples of Christ for our students.
We Are Classical Christian Educators
Education does not exist for its own sake. It is not an exercise conducted on paper. Education occurs when information is transferred from one individual to another.
As Christian educators, our goal is not to require the students to spend all their time gazing at the sun. We want them to examine everything else in the light the sun provides. It would be invincible folly to try to blacken the sun in order to be able to study the world around us objectively.
Because all truth comes from God, the universe is coherent. Without God, particulars have no relation to other particulars. The universe must, under this understanding, be a multiverse; an infinite array of absurd “facts.” In education this position leads to the fragmentation of knowledge. History bears no relation to English, and biology no relation to philosophy.
Because we have a Christian world view, based on the Scriptures, we are able to give the students a unified education. That unity is only possible because of the centrality of the Scriptures in the educational process. Without that centrality, true education will wither and die. With it, all subjects will be understood, and more importantly, they will be understood as parts of an integrated whole.
If the subject matter is in line with the Scriptures but the life of the teachers is not, a conflict is created in the mind of the student. What the inconsistent teacher writes on the blackboard and what he lives in the classroom are two different things. This same conflict can be created in the minds of the students and teachers if a board members is living in a manner inconsistent with the Bible.
When hypocrisy is tolerated it leads to greater problems. At best, the integrated Christian world view becomes a dead orthodoxy – – true words, but only words. At worst, anti-Christian living leads to anti-Christian teaching. The hypocrisy is removed by making the instruction as false as the life.
As Christian educators, we recognize that hypocrisy on our part will place a stumbling block in the path of the students. The flow of information from teacher to student will be seriously hindered. Because we are in the business of transmitting a Christian world view we must also be in the business of living exemplary Christian lives.
