Worldview Education
Topics in this sub-area
are: Home Education Informal Education Christian Schools Christian Teachers Public
Schools Science Education This is a "sampler page" and most sections
include a links-page (in CAPITAL LETTERS) where the topic is treated in more depth, with links to more pages. What is a worldview?
Our HOMEPAGE for
Worldviews has a basic outline of "what a worldview is" and why this concept is so useful for understanding
people and our societies. Other essential aspects of worldviews
are in the first five paragraphs on the right side, in the introduction and "Shared yet Unique."
In one part of a series
about options, decisions, and truth, Dick Tripp explains what
a worldview is.
Basically, a worldview
is a view of the world —
a mental model of reality, a set of theories (believed by a person
or a community) about what exists, how and why things happen, and
what
it means — that is used for living in
the world, that serves as a foundation for our thoughts,
decisions, and actions.
Christian Education
Home
Education: For all Christian parents (whether their children are
being formally educated in a home school, private school, or public school),
education
for a Christian worldview — based on the Bible and including spiritual
disciplines (prayer,...) — should begin in the home. Sue Bohlin
shares ideas about worldviews in a
"camel story" introduction and a commentary on Worldproofing
Your Kids by Lael Arrington. A
wider
range
of resources
for worldview education is
in HOME SCHOOLING.
Christian Schools continue
the worldview
education that begins in the home and culture. A private school with a
Christian foundation can provide an environment that is spiritually edifying,
with curriculum and instruction designed to achieve the explicit goal of helping
its students develop a Christian worldview and apply this worldview in all of
life, inside and outside the classroom. How can this be done most effectively? This
question, which has inspired much study and debate, will eventually be examined
in detail here. For now, here are three pages that I think you'll
find interesting:
The
Radical Nature of Christian Schooling (from a principal in New Zealand)
[page is no longer available],
A
Vision for Christian Education by
Mark Witwer, who wants to Teach Students to Think Christianly.
the educational
mission of Dordt College
(in a Christian Learning Community with a Kingdom Perspective) can also
be used in K-12
schools,
the three-stage classical
education (grammar, logic, rhetoric) of Mars Hill Academy, whose
goal is "to
integrate learning, to think systemically about critical issues, and
to submit all knowledge to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who gives wisdom
abundantly
to all who ask for it."
and more
information is in CHRISTIAN
EDUCATION IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS.
Christian
Teachers can openly share their faith and teach their worldviews in Christian
schools (and in home schools, of course!) and they can live Christianly,
in their teaching quality and their relationships with students
and
colleagues,
in
public
schools.
Wheaton College helps the
future teachers in its School of Education become agents
of beneficial change — consistent
with their Christian faith, principles, and love — whether they
teach in private and public schools, so they can "create a significant
difference in the lives of their students, their schools, and their communities."
Informal
Education
This occurs
in the home, in the church community and the broader local community, and
in the context
of a culture that includes a variety of media such as music and magazines,
movies and marketing, books and websites, discussions and lectures, radio
and television.
Later, maybe in 2012, there will be link-pages for The Da Vinci Code and for other
books & movies:
Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter,...
and for Christian movie-review websites.
an
I.O.U. — informal education and lifelong learning have worldview
implications, both intentional and unintentional, and eventually these
will be examined in more breadth and depth in the "informal education"
areas of SCHOOL
OPTIONS and ORIGINS
EDUCATION. }
Lifelong Learning:
The personal benefits of intentional lifelong learning —
of learning from life, for life — both in school and outside,
are discussed in Motivations
for Learning (how to weld or ski!) and Christian
Education for the Whole Person by Craig Rusbult.
A valuable
skill wherever you are, in or out of school, is Critical
Thinking from a Christian Perspective. For example, should
you believe claims for a warfare between science and religion?
Public Education
Public
Schools also
provide worldview
education, but what are they teaching? This important question
is examined most comprehensively in WORLDVIEWS
& RELIGION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Building
on that foundation, this section will give you a few additional resources,
and will look more closely at the
potential
dangers
of teaching about worldviews, whether this teaching is intentional or
incidental, implicit or explicit.
For
example, Charles Haynes doesn't think an absence of religious perspectives
will produce a
neutral balance, but he warns that "teaching
the controversy" in evolution — or in other hotly debated areas,
such as teaching about religion, or discussing faith-based principles
and motivations
in character education, "could be disastrous" if teachers are not well
prepared.
Can we achieve worldview
balance and religious neutrality in public schools if
religious perspectives are always ignored? But if
public schools do teach about religion, some advocates of nonreligious
worldviews will
worry
about
positive portrayals
of religion, and some advocates of religious worldviews will think this
could be a particularly effective way for educators to continue their
anti-religious
indoctrination of students: Can
public worldview education with critical thinking be dangerous?
Some educators will want to portray alternative
religions (neopaganism,...) and non-religions (atheism,...) in an especially
positive way. In some programs this goal is explicit (an
example) but it could be implicit in others, subtle and hidden yet
real.
In a typical public school,
now and in the future, are
there causes for concern? Charles Glenn looks
at the educational goals of governments and families, and analyzes the
historical
and philosophical
foundations of fanatical
secularism in
public education that "has made the
exclusion of religion from the public schools seem [for public educators
in the past
and present]... essential to the mission of education."
How should Christians view proposed changes
in
education? Don
Closson suggests attitudes and strategies for understanding
and
evaluating educational
reforms.
In K-12 or college, the choice of a school
is important; Dick Carpenter provides tips for investigating the
worldview(s)
of a college. No matter where you are, though, or what you're
doing (whether you're in school or out), it's important to put
your beliefs into practice.
Science
Education in Public Schools:
In a comprehensive chapter from Taking
Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum, Warren Nord and Charles Haynes
describe some possibilities for teaching about relationships
between science and religion. { More information about "worldviews
in science education" are above and in ORIGINS
EDUCATION and THE NATURE
OF SCIENCE.
}
Science and Religion
Relationships between Science and Religion
will be a major feature of this website; a beginning is THE
TWO BOOKS OF GOD: NATURE & SCRIPTURE.
The homepage for Christian
Apologetics & Postmodern Relativism has a section (currently
small) about the
lack of scientific support for postmodern relativism, in Einstein's Theory
of Relativity (which is actually a Theory of
Invariance) and in the
Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics.
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Living a Worldview
A
worldview is "a view of the world, used
for living in the world" so in daily living it should be
the dominant influence shaping your decisions and actions. Douglas
Wilson emphasizes the importance of developing a Christian worldview
that is truly in
the heart and mind (not just on the tongue) and is converted
into action: "A Christian worldview is not
the same thing as Christian worldview jargon. ... Having a Christian
worldview means living like an obedient Christian in all of life."
In this column,
the main theme is converting worldview-IDEAS into worldview-ACTION
for living. It
begins by examining worldviews (communal and individual), followed
by General
Principles that are useful for everyone, and then moving into Ethical
Principles (with
a mixture of general and Christian ideas) and Christian
Living.
Worldviews — Shared yet Unique
Some parts of a worldview
are shared by all Christians. And
some sharing is
specific to Catholics (or Baptists, Mennonites,...) and to those
who are not Christian yet have experiences with it — some through
personal experience, and almost everyone through being influenced
by "what
they hear" from media, friends, or their own religious leaders.
A person's "Christian worldview" is
influenced by their beliefs and faith, and also by other factors — their
inherited characteristics and abilities, background experiences and
life context, the values, attitudes, and habits they have developed,
and more — and these vary from one person to another.
Therefore,
it's not accurate to talk about THE Christian worldview, since
each person has a unique worldview. But we can think of the beliefs
shared by all Christians as being "the Christian worldview-component"
if we recognize that this component varies from one person to another
(and one church to another), and if we recognize that Christian
beliefs are only one part — although often
a very important
part — of a person's worldview.
General
Principles
Some principles for effective
living are general, spanning a wide range of worldviews:
The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People (by Stephen Covey) summarizes and illustrates
valuable principles for living. I recommend reading this book.
To convince you that it's worth reading, there are summaries (by Covey) of The 7 Habits and (by others) a brief
review, an introductory
summary and a detailed summary in a 10-page outline: inside-out
and overview
and the habits.
A classic from John
Wooden,
whose UCLA teams won 10 basketball championships in 12 years (1964-1975),
is The Pyramid of Success for athletics and life. Wooden
began with his definition of success — "success is peace of mind,
which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made
the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable
of becoming" — and built a Pyramid
of Success that is useful
in all areas of life; you can learn
about each of the 15 blocks and print
the pyramid.
Conflict Resolution: useful
principles from U.S.
Navy & UC-Berkeley & The
Bible & Colman
McCarthy (re: turtles
and sharks,...) & Peacemaker
Ministries (for coaching
mediation arbitration and exploration
using pagetop links, search, sitemap!) & 12
Skills (beginning with Win/Win) & Conflict
Resolution Information Source (with LOTS of information if you're willing to click links and you like to explore, in a knowledge
base about apology
+ forgiveness and much more).
Ethical Principles
Christian Ethics: Byron Borger provides an excellent summary
of important ideas from a book, by Dennis Hollinger, that he says
is "the best I have yet seen" about Christian
ethics. This book "makes it clear that admitting
ethical complexity is not the same as moral relativism."
{ The page also includes brief descriptions of nine other books about
ethics-and-applications. }
General Ethics:
Are ethics and atheism compatible? In his introduction to worldviews
and options, Jerry Solomon seems to question the possibility of non-Christian
ethics when he says to a friend, "Joe, you're
an excellent doctor. You care deeply about your patients.
Why do you care so much for people since you believe we have evolved
by chance? What gives us value?" {source}
Solomon says that "Joe was stunned by the question
and couldn't answer it. His 'world view' had taken a blow."
Do you think Joe should be stunned, or can an atheist have good reasons
for being ethical?
Charles Kay summarizes
the principles of four
ethical theories: Egoism & Utilitarianism & Deontological Ethics and a Theory
of Justice by John
Rawls that you can see in an overview and, in more depth, from IEP & Stanford & Wikipedia. Most of these principles are
consistent with a wide range of worldviews. For example, a
principle of Rawls — asking you to imagine that you
don't know your role in society (are you rich or poor, influential
or powerless,...)
when
you are thinking about how to structure your society — is related to the “golden rule” of
Jesus (Matthew 7:12) because Rawls is describing one way that we can develop empathy for others (for their situations & perspectives) and Jesus is saying that, when we are using our imaginations to think in this empathetic way, we should “do the right thing” to convert our ethical ideas into ethical actions. But these ideas-and-actions can also be used by people in other religions (not just Christianity) and by
atheists.
Ethical principles similar
to The
Golden Rule — treating others as we would like to be treated,
or (with empathy and an understanding that others may differ from
us)
treating others as we think they want to be treated — occur in
a wide range of religions and philosophies, and can form the basis
for
a shared ethics. A basic principle of character
education is the existence of "widely shared...
core
ethical values... that transcend religious and cultural differences
and express our common humanity." (quoted from #1 in Eleven
Principles of Effective Education)
Norman
Geisler, a Christian scholar, respectfully summarizes ideas from The
Ethics of Humanism by Paul Kurtz (author of Humanist Manifesto
II, who claims "there can be an objective
and positive humanist basis for ethical conduct") and then
Geisler critically analyzes the positive and negative aspects of
Kurtz's views.
The two meanings of tolerance
(old and new) and the ethical demands based on "the new tolerance" are
discussed in APOLOGETICS &
RELATIVISM.
Christian
Living
Some general principles for
effective living are useful for everyone. But a Christian believes
that to live a fully effective life, as defined by God, we need Jesus
Christ.
Yes,
God has a wonderful plan for our lives, but to live it we must
develop a Bible-based worldview, and live this worldview daily
by faith. Paul
says, "Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice
to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This
is the true worship that you should offer. Do not conform
yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform
you inwardly
by a complete change
of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God — what
is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect." (Romans 12:1-2) And
a brief modern classic describes a Christ-Directed
Life.
The essence of living a
Christian worldview is letting God transform your mind and thus
your attitudes, relationships, and actions, as described in reviews
( 1 2)
of The
Transforming Vision by Brian Walsh ( articles
- academic & popular). More
ideas, and inspirations for living in a way that is consistent
with
these
ideas, are
in Foundations
for Developing a Christian Worldview, which gives brief summaries
of 14 inspiring books.
We can learn from
your own experience and also the experience of others, by talking
with them or by reading biographies such as Christian
Leaders (Servants) in Action. (Mark 10:42-45)
Paul says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." (Colossians
3:23-24)
God calls all Christians
to a life of service, and there are many ways to serve. No
matter what you're doing, whether it's helping the poor in Calcutta
or
serving people and God in some other way, here is wise advice
from Mother Teresa: "...it was
never between you and them anyway." But if it isn't
between you and them, what (and who) is it all about?
It's
obvious that Teresa invested her life in humble service. But
can we also serve God by working, in our vocation, as a plumber,
teacher, secretary, or
scientist? Walter Hearn offers wise advice in his excellent
book about Being a Christian in Science: a
summary
and reviews. And a sub-area is devoted to exploring
opportunities for CHRISTIANS
IN SCIENCE.
Christian
Perspectives on Critical Thinking criticizes an either-or view of
faith and reason, because although "our salvation
is in Jesus Christ, not human reason,... logical reasoning is useful and
it should be highly valued," and "critical = evaluative"
so critical thinking can produce positive conclusions and praise.
And it links to educational web-resources that will help you (and your
students) improve the quality of your thinking.
Can we live more Christianly by exerting more effort? Or does it require dependence on a spiritual source of support? Motivated
by these questions, here are two pages I've assembled from the writings of others.
Building
a Vital Spiritual Life by Prayer: principles of prayer — featuring
two commandments of Jesus, a spiritual metaphor, and two prayers
of Paul — that make it easier for God to supply the wisd
om and love we need for living.
Abide
in Christ: excerpts from the classic book on relational
spirituality by Andrew Murray.
Later, there will be
more, from the thousands of websites with principles of Christian
faith
and living. We haven't yet invested the time needed to
make a short list, but here is a short classic — The
Four Spiritual Laws (available in HTML and many
languages & versions including a Good
News Children's Version and CCC's Flash) — plus
(from Billy
Graham) Steps
to Peace With God and (from Greg
Laurie) How
to Know God. And
you can explore Christian resources and Kids
Links.
Christian Stewardship
Fully
living a Christian worldview involves a CHRISTIAN
STEWARDSHIP of
everything in life, including our opportunities (which depend on time,
abilities, knowledge, money, relationships,...) and our environment.
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