The Challenge to Reduce the Gap Between School and the World

Life as we Inhabit many communities

As I have written before on this blog, our children learn much more in the day-to-day life of the school than just curriculum content. Education is more than reception of knowledge. The life of the school in and outside the classroom has an influence in shaping them as people and citizens. Hence, all schools and their teachers have some responsibility to keep in mind a focus on transformation of students as learning and life are enacted together in a school 'community'.

A key agenda for teachers and leaders in our schools, should be to narrow the gap between our students experience of school and life (Cairney p19). Students like all people, inhabit multiple communities. How do their actions, values and priorities and so on, vary as they move from one community to another? It is critical for all teachers and parents to understand the interrelationship of home, school and community. It's easy to adopt such priorities as a goal, but it needs to be more than words. It needs to be a deeply held beliefs and values founded on a rich understanding of the complexity and differences between the communities students inhabit. 

In 'Pedagogy and Education for Life', I offer vignettes of students I taught. For one student, I could identify at least 8 key and influential communities she experienced simultaneously. Including her 'group' of school friends, members of her art class, her extended family (especially her grandparents), a dance group, staff she worked with part-time at a pizza parlour, her netball team, other students in a technical college food service class, and her 2,500 Facebook friends.

Why is this Important?

Every one of the varied communities that students inhabit require them to take on specific roles, values, forms of engagement, priorities and their view of what the 'good life' looks like (Cairney, pp 20-21).

And here's the rub! Each of our students varied communities has an influence on shaping values, desires and priorities in life. These of course, reflect the type of person the world seems to value, and hence who they 'should' seek to become. Sadly, there is often great inconsistency between these diverse communities. As a result, sometimes we will give a kind of tacit agreement to some things, but not challenge other positions which we might not accept. In this way, over time our students are shaped in word and action as they negotiate their complex lives. All our students' diverse communities of practice have an impact and begin to shape the things they love, desire and value.

James Smith helpfully suggests that we need to understand that our Christian education efforts need to influence our students' loves and desires that "...in turn govern and generate action both individual and collective" (James Smith, "Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation", 2009). The role of school must always be seen as more than teaching knowledge and skills; it is also a key vehicle and context for student formation as people.

Smith helpfully reminds us that the 'heart' not simply the mind, should be our primary target. Why? Because it is from here that our students' loves and desires are shaped. As he puts it, "our doing bubbles up from our loves, whether we realize it or not." As teachers and parents, it is critical that we seek to influence such loves and desires, for it is these that will generate the things they value most and hence priorities and actions.  

What are some of the means to achieving this goal?

In the rest of the post, let me suggest three tests or questions we should regularly apply to our schools, as well as our teachers and leaders within them. You could use a variety of ways to assess these simple questions, including discussing your observations with a few other parents, as well as with your students as their teacher. And as parent you should discuss this with your children. You might also look carefully at the school website to see how it promotes itself. Here are three simple questions or 'lenses' to get started.

First, try to take a 'step back, and identify the things your children's school seems to value most in its actions, priorities and promotion of itself. The website will be helpful here as well as your children's reflections on their experiences. List the top three.

Second, how easy is it to see how the school understands its position within the world? Does it make explicit how the priorities of a faith-based school are different from secular schools?

Third, sit down with your children and ask them to share what they believe the school values most. Try to drill down to the level of the teacher and ask what various teachers seem to value most.  

Fourth, now consider whether the above observations are similar or different to those of the faith-based school. What is special and distinctive about your school? What is the same?

There is nothing startling about these four questions, but I suspect if you consider them carefully, and perhaps discuss them with other parents as well as your children, you might have some useful conversations about the things that matter most to the school and your children and you as parents.