“…But today, there is no close affinity between the home and the school. We must, therefore, learn how to close the gap (1) through the development of new communication opportunities and methods, (2) in discipline, (3) in teaching and (4) even in the sort of personnel who are selected to function as teachers. Essentially, we must answer in the most practical terms, ‘How can we get the home back into the school and the school back into the home?’”
Adams goes on: “Among the many considerations that will have to be faced is the selection of teaching staff on a widely different basis than most of the present teaching qualifications require. Teachers must be appointed not simply because they are competent in a particular subject area, but because, in addition to that, and in addition to their competence in theology, they show promise as parent-teachers. If the familial father/son discipling method, rather than the Greek, head-packing academic model of teaching be accepted as the biblical method (which it is), then we must also consider the ability of the teacher to exemplify (or model) that which he teaches, along with his academic credits. It is, moreover, crucial for him to incarnate the truth he teaches in life as a parent would for his child. He will be, for the first time, genuinely en loco parentis.”
Adams goes on: “Among the many considerations that will have to be faced is the selection of teaching staff on a widely different basis than most of the present teaching qualifications require. Teachers must be appointed not simply because they are competent in a particular subject area, but because, in addition to that, and in addition to their competence in theology, they show promise as parent-teachers. If the familial father/son discipling method, rather than the Greek, head-packing academic model of teaching be accepted as the biblical method (which it is), then we must also consider the ability of the teacher to exemplify (or model) that which he teaches, along with his academic credits. It is, moreover, crucial for him to incarnate the truth he teaches in life as a parent would for his child. He will be, for the first time, genuinely en loco parentis.”
Back to the Black Board, p. 72, by Jay E. Adams, his emphasis, (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1982).
Adams goes on to speak of ways to reduce or eliminate the professionalization of teachers, and as well, the institutionalization of the traditional day-school classroom setting. He aims at getting rid of: homework, report cards, parent-alone parent-teacher consultations, and other forms of professional and institutional expressions. He also, positively, stresses that parents must: support the authority of the classroom teacher, make plans to step into the class and assist in the teaching and learning process, and take on an active role of listening to students read, and to help with writing, as examples. Adams dreams too—“ The world is the classroom for teaching by discipleship. Students will be in contact with adults and with many sectors of life in the process, not merely with their peers in cloistered halls.” I am committed to his dream.
We can imprint the classroom with a home-like climate even more: teachers telling stories relative to academic content and illustrating points with slices of everyday life, taking students outside for lectures and lessons, making use of communication forms with purposeful informality through dialogue, rhyme, rhythmic lines of feedback, chants, poems and quips, presenting comparisons and offering contrasts using common place matters, setting up interaction about a day’s lesson with a DVD clip or news article and other visuals, and starting a written or oral dialogue—and expecting students to finish them employing pertinent facts and applicatory features.
Community in the classrooms—the involvement of a variety of adults, with a mixture of age and life-experience—needs our attention as well.
Helping the class to be home-like takes work, but it is the method of education that reflects Deuteronomy 6.
Do our classrooms show a commitment to putting in place such teachers? Do you know teachers who teach to incarnate truth, who home-carnate truth?
G. Mark Sumpter
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