An Analysis And Theological Critique Of Education

When we ask the question, “what is the purpose of education?” we are asking, “what is the purpose of educating human beings?” and any sincere answer to this question can only be advanced following our reflections upon the interrelated question, “what do we mean by being human?” This ‘Who are We?” question is embedded, though usually not explicitly, in school inspection regimes, in day-to-day teaching practice, and in all educational dialogue and policy. It affects the wellbeing of those on the frontline of education. But it is possible for staff, policy makers and academics to uncover these hidden assumptions, explore counter-narratives, and transform school curricula in the light of these reformed narratives. The author approaches these questions from a Christian Contemplative standpoint, via Radical Orthodoxy (RO) - an academic, persuasive and polemical sensibility - and through the prayerful and relational aspiration of the contemplative tradition. It takes as a central case study the inspection of a school by the UK Government inspection body, Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education.

Newspapers are filled with stories about poorly educated children, ineffective teachers, and cash-strapped school districts. In this greatly expanded treatment of a topic he first dealt with in Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson proposes an alternative to government-operated school by advocating a return to classical Christian education with its discipline, hard work, and learning geared to child development stages. As an educator, Wilson is well-equipped to diagnose the cause of America's deteriorating school system and to propose remedies for those committed to their children's best interests in education. He maintains that education is essentially religious because it deals with the basic questions about life that require spiritual answers-reading and writing are simply the tools. Offering a review of classical education and the history of this movement, Wilson also reflects on his own involvement in the process of creating educational institutions that embrace that style of learning. He details elements needed in a useful curriculum, including a list of literary classics. Readers will see that classical education offers the best opportunity for academic achievement, character growth, and spiritual education, and that such quality cannot be duplicated in a religiously-neutral environment.

With rare exceptions, serious intentional, reflective and sustained interfaith encounter is a novel and recent enterprise. This book looks in detail at one such encounter--the intentional recent Hindu-Christian dialog in India--and asks why and how the practice of dialog came to replace previous attitudes of confrontation and monologue (especially on the part of Christians). Part I sets the encounter in its global context. Part II offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the actual encounter. Part III draws on aspects of the Christian tradition as it critically examines the ways in which the dialog has been justified in Christological categories. A final chapter discusses the future of the encounter. Unlike many other works in the area of interfaith studies, this work combines both descriptive detail of the actual encounter and critical theological analysis of the strengths and weakness of the dialog model.

More and more seminaries, Christian universities, and Bible colleges are opting to train future ministers and missionaries online. What happens when the movement toward online education is shaped by pragmatic or financial concerns instead of Scripture and theology? Ministry training can be reduced to a mere transfer of information as institutions lose sight of their calling to shape the souls of God-called men and women in preparation for effective ministry. How might online ministry training look different if biblical and theological foundations were placed first? Teaching the World brings together educators from a wide range of backgrounds and from some of the largest providers of online theological education in the world. Together, they present a revolutionary new approach to online theological education, highly practical and yet thoroughly shaped by Scripture and theology.

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David I. Smith shows how faith can and should play a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learning experience.

Using a new model focused on four core capacities-intellectual complexity, social location, empathetic accountability, and motivated action--Teaching Civic Engagement explores the significance of religious studies in fostering a vibrant, just, and democratic civic order. In the first section of the book, contributors detail this theoretical model and offer an initial application to the sources and methods that already define much teaching in the disciplines of religious studies and theology. A second section offers chapters focused on specific strategies for teaching civic engagement in religion classrooms, including traditional textual studies, reflective writing, community-based learning, field trips, media analysis, ethnographic methods, direct community engagement and a reflective practice of "ascetic withdrawal." The final section of the volume explores theoretical issues, including the delimitation of the "civic" as a category, connections between local and global in the civic project, the question of political advocacy in the classroom, and the role of normative commitments. Collectively these chapters illustrate the real possibility of connecting the scholarly study of religion with the societies in which we, our students, and our institutions exist. The contributing authors model new ways of engaging questions of civic belonging and social activism in the religion classroom, belying the stereotype of the ivory tower intellectual.