Philosophy of Education
The compass for a WC education.
Learning can be thought of as the process of discovering and applying truth, beauty, and goodness to one’s life. As followers of Christ, this process is a natural part of our discipleship. A Christian education that develops a student’s mind to rightly think about God, himself and the world in which we live, is not only vital to the Christian life but also part of the command to exercise dominion over the created world.
Worthington Christian School holds the following precepts about learning to be true and foundational to our work:
- As the creator of the universe, God is the source of all things, including all knowledge. Anything true – including that which is truly good or beautiful – that is to be found in the world is a reflection of his nature, since “all truth is God’s truth.” Every discipline, from mathematics to history to science and the arts, has been given to us as a means to better understand him.
- The fall of man shattered our ability to rightly understand the world around us. Our minds suffered the full effects of the fall as much as our hearts and souls.
- God’s purpose in redemption includes the restoration of our minds’ ability to rightly discover and understand truth as it has been revealed to us by God in the natural world, in Scripture, and ultimately in and through his Son.
- The purpose of education, then, is to cooperate with that redemptive purpose. As Milton states, “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him.” God’s plan for us is to be agents of his redemptive work in restoring his created purpose to the world. In order to do that our minds must be conformed to the image of Christ.
- God is the creator of all knowledge, knows all things perfectly and fully, and “fills everything in every way.” So when we learn something true that we did not previously know – in whatever field or discipline – we become more like him. This opens up the entire universe for the study and discovery of truth, goodness, and beauty.
- We are impelled by Scripture to love God with our minds, in addition to our hearts and souls. The role of a Christian school education is to develop those areas of our minds that the ministry of a church cannot typically address. WC offers calculus, biology, studio art, and British literature because its role is distinct from the church. A Christian school education should be a powerful supplement to the spiritual formation and discipleship of the church’s ministry.