Hello fellow educators,

Welcome to podcast number nine. I continue to enjoy many of your comments regarding the podcasts. We are sending out many copies of my book, “Discipling this Generation for a Digital World.” If you will email a comment we will continue to send out free copies.

We have been speaking about the Learning Outcomes or goals for a full liberal arts approach to discipleship based Christian education. We were asked last week, “What do we mean by a Liberal Arts approach, isn’t this term used more for a university or college education?” Yes the phrase primary is used to describe post secondary education, but more and more our undergraduate studies are becoming more specialized and thus don’t meet the criteria of a broad based educational approach. The  term comes from classical Western culture meaning the curriculum we teach the free man (from the Latin: libera meaning free) in contrast to the vocational training that would be given the slave or servant. Artes Liberales, in classical and medieval times, referred to seven disciplines in two categories called the Trivium and Quadriviun. 

The Trivium (literally meaning 3 roads) was primarily focused on the language arts starting with the grammar phase – the learning and acquisition of language and is the root of our idea of grammar school. The other two phases in the Trivium are Logic and Rhetoric. The emphasis in the Logic phase was placed on thinking skills, ordering facts, testing hypothesis and the application of abstract ideas into truth. The Rhetoric phase developed the art of communicating well. Once a student has obtained knowledge of the facts and developed the skills necessary to arrange those facts into arguments, he must develop the skill of communicating those arguments to others.

The Quadrivium (literally meaning four roads) focused on four areas of study: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. This is the foundation for our modern science degrees in post secondary. When the student mastered the concepts and skills of the Trivium they would proceed to the concepts of the quadrivium to move forward into philosophy and theology. Remember that the sciences in medieval times were considered a philosophical discipline. The quadrivium may be considered as the study of how the number makes its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic is the pure number, geometry is the number in space, music is the number in time, and astronomy is the number in space and time. In medieval times, once these concepts were mastered, the student would proceed to theology or philosophy or, if they were of a more practical mind, architecture.

It is exciting to see many of our home educators in Heritage Christian Online School returning to a classical approach towards education through the encouragement of authors like Susan Wise Bauer and curriculum suppliers like Sonlight. Too much of our home education and classroom curriculum focuses on the rote memorization of facts and basic skill development instead of introducing the learner to wonder of God’s world through great literature, pure exploration and true development of the mind.

I would caution though, that a classical education isn’t necessarily a Christian education. The idea that just because something has endured the test of time does not mean that it is founded in truth. I would add that we have a responsibility to go beyond the development of the mind and help our students in the preparation of life as a disciple of Christ. If classical western education has a fault it is in prioritizing the development of the mind to the exclusion of all other areas of life. Don’t get me wrong, if you spent any amount of time with me in discussion about education, you would hear me express over and over the need to disciple strong thinking Christians who can rigorously engage the false systems of this world. I consider the development of the mind crucial to the success of our students particularly in our post-modern ere where honest thinking has been traded for relativistic tolerance. But our goal is to renew the mind for the purpose of finding and accomplishing the will of God and not for the mind itself. Thus our education program must extend itself beyond just helping create a good mind to helping create a good life which a strong mind is very much a part of.

The last two weeks we spoke about the learning outcomes that demonstrated our commitment to the liberal arts approach. The following learning outcomes demonstrate our commitment to helping our children develop in the areas beyond the mind and body. They speak to the concepts of community and life purpose.

• It is our goal, expectation and purpose that our students understand, respect, value and submit to God ordained authority on all levels as they submit to His truth and purposes.

God created us to be relational beings and from our basic family unit to the complexity of nations God has created structure to our relationships by means of authority. Inherent in our fallen nature is the propensity to resist authority. The first thing we must establish to enter the Kingdom of God is a commitment to Christ’s authority. We must confess Jesus as Lord to be saved, Rom. 10:9-10. Our next outcome speaks to our relationship to God ordained human authority:

• It is our goal, expectation and purpose that our students understand, respect, value and submit to:
• The family (defined in scriptures as a husband, wife and children) as the "primary" institution of God's order in all relationships.
• The universal and local Church as God's means of discipleship and fellowship with other believers.
• The secular government and it's institutions as God's ordained means of authority and order for our broader society.

The family is the foundation for all other social interaction and relationships. It is no wonder that the enemy of our faith has focused his primary attack upon this sacred institution. We must now prepare our children for a world that is in the midst of a sexual revolution, has rejected the sanctity of life, redefined what it means to be a man or women and embraced cohabitation and homosexual marriage as normal. In today’s world the Christian has become the most important advocate for the integrity of the family and its authority.

The community of the Church has to be an intricate part of our discipleship process. Both our campus school and our online school are parochial lead institutions under the authority of Kelowna Christian Center. I have personally seen the tremendous strength that my own children have received from this threefold cord of the Home, Church and School. All three of these God center institutions, working together, have given my children a complete environment to be raised up as disciples of Christ. From the very first day we sent our oldest son off to kindergarten to the this final semester of Grade 12 for my youngest our children have been raised in an environment where their faith, their worldview and their Christian experience have all been consistent. My own extended family began to struggle in their commitment to the local church. They embraced a heretical doctrine of extreme grace that excused them from any commitment to the local church. I remember saying to one of my wife’s siblings, “I bet you my children that you making the wrong decision.” Meaning that we shall see in ten years who is right by how our children continue to pursue the faith. Needless to say, our kids have continued in a very strong pursuit of the will of God for their lives and this family’s kids have no Christian experience whatsoever. We have to develop a strong love and commitment to the local Church in the lives or our children and this will, in turn, develop a strong love for the worldwide Church.

As we have spoken about in previous podcasts our relationship and goals of education differ greatly from those of the our Provincial government’s goals. If we were to sum up their vision it is to train up economically sound citizens. God has placed us in our perspective country to influence and build the kingdom of God. And, as Romans 13 so aptly teaches we have to be subject to the secular authorities. Our students need to first establish their allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and then, as long as the civil authority will allow us to participate as kingdom minded people, we are to work hard to bring righteousness to our society. We need to vote and run for political office. We should speak with prophetic clarity to our culture and call them to righteousness and ultimately the kingdom of God. Jesus told us how hard it is to serve two masters and I believe this generation could find themselves having to choose whom they will serve. Our curriculum and practices must teach our kids how to think and navigate through the difficult challenges of when we are to “obey God rather than man,” or figuratively “wash our neighbour’s feet.” These are questions of social authority.

• It is our goal, expectation and purpose that our students be dedicated to moral purity and to treat those of either gender with respect and dignity.

This is obviously first learned in the home. There is no real substitute for the many years children observe how their father loves their mother and conversely how a mother respects their father. The family environment is the best curriculum. I have always been conscious of this as a Father. My daughter will know how a man should treat a woman and she won’t fall for any bozo out who doesn’t treat her with respect and dignity. My sons know I will be the first one in their face if they have mistreated a girl and they know what it means to be Proverbs 31 woman as they look for a future wife. It is my opinion, and we will leave it there, that our students are not mature enough while still in secondary school to be pursuing a relationship that could led to life-long decision. I have almost never observed a healthy, morally pure and dignified romantic relationship with kids in high school. I say almost because we all hear about the stories of the high school sweethearts and I don’t want to say it could never happen. Even these relationships have to go slow, be well chaperoned and wait so that they won’t become distracted with temptation and relational issues. Our young men need to learn to treat our young women as sisters and our young women need to learn to treat our young men as brothers. Because so much of these relational dynamics happen within a school context we have a two-fold responsibility. In the campus school we need to supervise and help our families with the boundaries they have established. Secondly we have to teach a Biblical and godly approach towards dating, marriage and family.

Our next outcome speaks to broader relationships:

• It is our goal, expectation and purpose that our students understand and experience godly friendships with their peers based on trust, loyalty and quality communication supporting one another in their pursuit of a Christian lifestyle and experience.

Somewhere in the mid-school years friends become very important and in the mind of many or our mid school kids more important than their parents. We have to help our students balance their desire to grow independent from their parents with a healthy understanding of how our peers can influence us. 1 Cor. 15:33 Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals." Here is where home education is often misunderstood and misrepresented. People ignorant of what a good home education program can provide for the social life of a child will say, “Home school kids are not adequately taught how to socialize with other kids and are missing this important point of development.” I can tell you unequivocally this simply is not true. I have the opportunity to work with hundreds of our home school families through our online school and have found that most of our kids are extremely socially active. The primary difference is that parents are responsible for the social networks they connect their children with. I have observed and excellent balance between their friendships and their families, something that doesn’t always hold true for our campus Christian schoolers. Home educated children often have a greater capacity for relationships outside of their own age level. In some cases home school kids can become so social in their clubs, music and dance programs, team sports that they over do it. No, a good home educational program can create the type of socialization that is much more natural to real life. It is our classroom approach that creates the artificial environment. It can become a place of shame and bullying, unfair comparisons and it often asks our children to act in ways that are beyond their ability to respond. This may sound like I am against the campus school environment, of which, obviously I am not. What I am against is the uneducated and unfounded criticism of homeschooling by those of us who have opted for classroom socialization which is the artificial environment. Any good homeschooler will know that they have to help their child engage a broader community and make friends. In fact they can help their kids in this process on a very personal level.

Here is our final Social and Relational Learning Outcome.

• It is our goal, expectation and purpose that our students learn to walk in love, integrity and holiness in every relationship.

The most important commandments in the scripture were not about gaining knowledge or taking on some noble quest, the two greatest commandments are about embracing our social and relational nature towards God first, and then, to our neighbor, Matt. 22:37-40. The Christian school should be a place of love. Any and all institutions have rules and ways of doing things including schools. But the Christian school should not be place where the law rules supreme over love. Any and all of our rules must find their place and definition in loving God, our parents, teachers and fellow students. If we can’t make the rule fit these criteria then we should toss it. Our kids are watching how we love and it defines for them what love means far more than what we say it means.

Next week we will talk about our final category, Vocational Outcomes. If you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address.