The teacher lives in a world of competing responsibilities and accountabilities. Those of us who have been involved in the profession have seen an almost exponential increase in the number of these accountabilities, which have impacted all teachers in their professional life.
Those who are Principals of schools have seen increased requirements in areas such as Occupational Health and Safety, Child Protection, and a generally never-to-be-satisfied (it seems) desire for more and more detailed documentation in every area of the school’s life. It is not surprising that an increasing number of schools are appointing staff with specific responsibility for Human Resources.
Those who are involved in Anglican schools, and who feel the responsibility for providing education that is faithful to the school’s Christian stance, have a further layer of responsibility with its own challenges.
Here is a list of desired outcomes that one school identified (taken from a larger set of desired characteristics that the school articulated):
- Providing a high quality education
- Providing a caring Christian environment
- Modeling the Christian faith
- Providing a high level of individual care for students
- Teaching the Christian faith in a way that is effective in bringing students and parents to a commitment to that faith
- Instilling in students Christian values.
The list is not exhaustive.
At first sight many of the desired characteristics seem unexceptional, especially for a school that is faith-based. However, the picture is not as simple as it seems, and the underlying issues are worthy of consideration.
The first issue to consider is this:
What is a Church doing in wanting to run a school anyway? Is not its job to run congregations rather than educational establishments?
Historically, the denominations have clearly answered that they see no contradiction or problem in running schools; in some cases, the denomination runs literally hundreds of them. In 1866 there were 186 Anglican schools in NSW, and the Diocese only withdrew from this involvement at the passage of the 1880 Public Instruction Act; since then the Diocese has been committed to the support of Anglican children in government schools, with the introduction of Special Religious Education. However, Anglican schools have continued to be a feature of the landscape in NSW, as elsewhere, with a program of establishing new affordable fee Anglican schools by the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation resulting in the growth of the number of Anglican schools within the Diocese of Sydney.
The potential problem remains, however. The focus of schools is to educate children in accordance with the requirements of the NSW Board of Studies and its syllabuses; the focus of churches is to evangelise and to build up their members in their Christian understanding and practice. If Churches choose to run schools as a part of their total activities, then we would expect that such schools will take the view that the teaching of Christian Studies (by what ever name the school uses), and outreach and evangelism are significant and important parts of the school’s curriculum and raison d’etre.
A second issue is this:
Are the desired characteristics outlined above compatible with one another?
For example, for many parents the quality of the education that a school provides is to be judged by the school’s HSC results. Is this understanding of success compatible with the gospel? The pressure of meeting parental expectations in relation to HSC results can mean that the attainment of high HSC results becomes the most important aim for the school. Schools are constantly making the observation that there is more to any school that a set of results, and that 13 years of education should not be reduced to a single set of examination results. However, the pressure to perform is very real, and parents expect schools to be giving priority to success as measured in this way. The set of desired outcomes given above requires other measures against which the school would want to be judged – and needs time and resources to be allocated accordingly.
Many schools outline as their goal that they seek to fulfil each student’s potential. It is worth considering the way the Bible understands this concept. The Biblical view is that true wisdom is to be found in the “fear of the Lord”. It follows that a student will not achieve full potential unless the student has been challenged to see wisdom in this light. If the school is committed to pursuit of wisdom in this sense, HSC results become less significant, and the school’s goals stand in tension with the parental and societal pressures described above.
A third issue is this:
How can we ensure that the school is a place in which the Christian faith is modeled?
And, in particular, if the school is to be a place where students are to see the Christian faith modeled, what does this mean for the employment policy of staff in the school? It can be argued that it is hard to envisage this modeling being effective in a school where there is no policy that staff employed should be active in their own Christian faith – or is that an unreasonable and unrealistic expectation? The issue of employment policy of staff in this matter is one of the most contentious in some schools. Some will argue that the appointment of “high quality” staff is the chief criterion for Heads to apply – but there is a basic conflict between such a policy and the ability of the school to model Christian faith through its teachers.
A fourth issue is this:
Should the school be able to articulate the connection between its desired characteristics and Biblical values and truth?
An example may make this issue clearer. Many schools will value pastoral care of students as a desired characteristic. Many will want to have a “caring environment” for their students.
The question is, on what basis? And, is the basis for this characteristic different in the case of an Anglican school to that of a school with no faith base at all? In the case of an Anglican school the basis of its pastoral concern for its students is, presumably, the Biblical principle of imago dei (Gen 1:26,27). We want to provide a high level of individual care for our students because God cares for us individually and because we are all made in the image of God. Other schools may have a different basis for their values, but for us the care of our students is an expression of this Biblical truth. In passing, we note that there are a number of other implications that will flow from this Biblical doctrine.
To argue in this way has a number of benefits:
- The way the Bible undergirds our planning, and our values as a school, is made clear and specific
- By bringing “onto the table” the Biblical basis for our planning, it allows us to see whether our planning is in fact consistent with Biblical truth
- Bringing to the fore the Biblical basis of our planning allows the school community at large see how the Bible shapes our plans and actions. The school is then modeling to the school community as a whole what it means to live under the Bible’s authority and guidance.
Does it matter?
In answering this question, consider the following: if being Anglican is significant, it ought to make a difference.
The publications that the school produces should be different from those of a school that has no faith basis. A stranger, with no knowledge of the school’s Christian basis, should be able to understand the nature and the extent to which the Bible has an influence on the school by reading the various public documents of the school. It is an interesting exercise to examine the statements that each of our schools make and to test them against this expectation.
In the world of competing responsibilities and accountabilities within which we live, clarity of thinking will make our task easier in the long run. Being clear as to the nature of our Christian basis, and its implications for policy and practice, will allow the school to meet its responsibilities and to shape its life in a manner consistent with its Anglican ethos and basis.
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