Connections Quarterly Winter 2018 - World Religions | Page 18

S ER VING C HRISTIANS IN IND EP END ENT S C H O O L S
Continued from page 15
While searching for what these “born again”
and “evangelical” parents viewed as the pur-
pose of education, Barna discovered 5 ma-
jor areas:
1. Instilling strong principles and values
(69% current ACSI parents compared
to 53% prospective parents),
2. Love for God and other people (65%
current to 33% prospective),
3. Ability to apply their knowledge
(referred to as wisdom) (60% current
to 47% prospective),
4. Faithfulness and obedience to God
(54% current to 21% prospective), and
5. Leadership skills (52% current to 46%
prospective).
As Barna noted, “Most parents are looking for
a school that aligns with their general ideas
about education—what a school should do.
However, parents’ specific priorities when it
comes to choosing a school seem to reveal
another side to what they value in an educa-
tion—what a school should be like.”
When parents were asked to rate 23 charac-
teristics of a school from “essential” to “nice to
have” to “not necessary,” Barna found the top
four characteristics below as most important
to parents:
1. Safety
2. Quality Teachers
Page 16 Winter 2018

3. Academic Excellence
4. Character Development and Spirituality
In my years of experience, I have found that
many Christian parents choose not to send
their children to Christian schools when they
feel like these four “essential” areas are not met.
I particularly observed this in the DC area, as
the majority of parents in my graduating 8th
grade classes chose secular schools for high
school. Nevertheless, that did not mean they
did not value the 5 purposes of education as
articulated in the ACSI poll. On the contrary, I
was encouraged to develop a course for 8th
graders that included many of those purposes
to prepare their children to not only survive
but thrive in a secular school environment.
The semester course was based upon three
themes I have taught for a number of years:
•
•
•
Bearing God’s Image
Sharing Your Faith in the Classroom
Understanding the Faith of
Historical Figures
As an aside, I was deeply saddened to learn
the two least important characteristics Chris-
tian parents sought in a school according to
the Barna Study: schools that are economi-
cally diverse and ethnically diverse. Along those
lines, in my most recent school that only went
through 6th grade, I developed a socioeco-
nomically and racially diverse Leadership
Forum for 8th graders in St. Louis to address
the above areas using a curriculum and cul-
minating leadership trip to Gettysburg and
Washington D.C. (I am currently turning these
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