"We’ve all heard and seen the numbers that show how biblically illiterate Christians are in America..... Why are over 90% of Christians unfamiliar with the Bible and incapable of articulating the doctrines of the Christian faith?" - Jason Jimenez
"Today, homeschooling in conservative evangelical communities is a key conduit for ideas that feed into Christian nationalism. In March, Charlie Kirk, a conservative Christian activist who has publicly downplayed the events of Jan. 6, rolled out a new education initiative that offers curricula and training that promises an 'America-first education' for K-12 students." - RNS
"...systematic theology leads to worldview formation as we seek to set the biblical-theological framework of Scripture over against all other worldviews and learn “to think God’s thoughts after him,” even in areas that the Bible does not directly address." - Stephen Wellum
"Here are three reasons why teachers of the Bible shouldn’t be boring—and four strategies to avoid boring teaching. Reason #1: God Is Interesting" - 9 Marks
"Faced with shrinking enrollment and finances, Christian colleges face the stark reality of deciding how much they are willing to change in order to continue their ministries. The fundamental question is “Where is the line which we cannot cross in order to stay open?” - Proclaim & Defend
Continues 3 Biblical Models for Grounding Education. Read the series so far.
The final of the three Biblical models for our consideration here is what I call Elihu’s Is/Ought Model. David Hume once critiqued divine command moral systems on grounds that they didn’t earn the right to move from is (descriptions of reality) to ought (prescriptions for what we should do about reality). Hume’s critique is not entirely unfair, and quite a few moral systems crack under the weight of the Humean accusation.
However, Elihu models a different approach, and one that transparently asserts an earned prescription for human ethics and understanding. We discover the wisdom of Elihu in Job 32-37, just before God’s case-closing response to Job. It is worth noting that Elihu’s and God’s arguments are so similar as to be indiscernible, if we weren’t told who was presenting the arguments in each case. As it turns out, there is further evidence for Elihu’s positive influence, even beyond his agreement with God’s own assertions. The only main character not rebuked in the book of Job is Elihu. Each of Job’s other friends stand guilty before God (though He would forgive them), and even Job himself is rebuked, though also ultimately forgiven. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were guilty of speaking wrongly of Job. Job was guilty of ignorance, but not for long, and Elihu helped with that.
Continues 3 Biblical Models for Grounding Education. Read the series so far.
Paul recognizes that in order for us to understand how best to educate people, we must understand what a person actually is. These days he has competition, however, as five major contemporary theories of learning all make significant assumptions about what a person is and how they are best educated.
Behaviorism focuses on the learners’ response to stimuli, and postulates that if you can control the environment through operant conditioning, then you can create change in the behavior of the learner. B.F. Skinner was convinced that the person was essentially an active organism that was conditioned to behavior. Cognitivism focuses on “the representations and processes needed to give rise to activities ranging from pattern recognition, attention, categorization, memory, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, and language.”22 Humanity is essentially a computing device, processing and acting based on schemas. As the educator assesses where the student is in Piaget’s four stages of development (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, or formal operational),23 the educator determines what information and tasks are age-appropriate for the computer to handle next.
