Made it Mine

Thanksgiving weekend this year originally looked like it wouldn’t shape up to be much of anything special.  Overwhelmed with schoolwork, I opted out of an option to join my three roommates on a trip to the coast and instead spent the weekend home alone.  When I told people about my plans, most seemed to feel a bit sorry for me- but I was actually looking forward to an opportunity to have the house to myself.  It had been a solid four months since I’d been left at the house for any longer than a couple of hours.  It’s interesting that the Lord keeps using Thanksgiving- a time usually reserved for spending time with people you love- as an opportunity for me to withdraw a bit and get some rest.  Thanksgiving 2007, during my time in Europe, I was so desperate for some time to myself away from my students and roommates that I used an extra day on my Eurail pass and spent Thanksgiving Day alone in Zurich before meeting up with people that Friday in Vienna.  It had felt a bit silly wandering around an unfamiliar city, replacing the traditional turkey and stuffing with a McChicken sandwich.  But I think the Lord knew I needed that time to quiet my heart and reboot. 

So with my roommates away for a few days, I did what I suspect most people home alone will do: stayed in my pajamas all day, replaced real meals with popcorn and Coke Light, took overly-long showers, and sang along nice and loud to my itunes playlists as I graded papers.  What still weighed heavily on my mind, though, was the December 1 decision that I had awaiting me upon our return to school that week.  I had been almost completely certain that I would be renewing my contract to return to WNS for at least another year early on in the semester, but some tension within our administration team and a few other concerning factors had dropped that certainty down several notches.  I felt like I had prayed, sought counsel, and thought myself in circles, and still had no direction.  So I picked up daily devotionals and my Bible each morning, looking for clarity.  But it was ultimately Nancy Pearcey and her book, Total Truth (which I mentioned in an earlier entry) that helped me find my answer.  I love this book.  

Now I’ve had those traditional spiritual highs, usually prompted by a retreat or other spiritual event filled with awesome worship, inspiring teaching, and ample moments for personal reflection.  Very emotional and heart-oriented.  But I’ll tell you what, I get most energized and excited about my faith when it isn’t my heart that’s touched, but my mind.  It’s the stirring of the intellect, and connections made between the spiritual and sacred and reason and Truth that make God real to me.  I’d take an intellectual “ah-ha” moment over an emotional high any day.  And so, as I read more of Pearcey’s book that weekend, I hit a few chapters where Pearcey discusses the history of the American church- particularly the growth of the evangelical movement.  Before that, I’d read her take on how social Darwinism and postmodernism has affected nearly every aspect of our American culture- even education.  There’s no need for me to go on and on about it here, but some of the revelations that I had as I read left me with an overwhelming sense of purpose in where God has me right now.  You probably remember that my original reasons for coming to Nairobi to teach at WNS were fairly underdeveloped and shallow.  That changed over the course of last year, and I developed a love for this little school, and particularly the students in my classroom.  I experimented with ways to fuse my teaching of my content (literature, written and oral communication, journalism, and theatre arts) and spiritual concepts together.  That was step one.  This Thanksgiving, some time alone reading a good book helped me to see what I suspect may be the bigger picture.  Oh- and according to Myers-Briggs, as an ENTJ, I am undoubtedly a visionary, “big picture” person.  You’re learning so much about me today.

So here’s the vision: I believe that American education is a stronghold for ideas, worldviews, and ideologies contrary to what’s true, right, and good.  I believe that the secularization of education has become a device of our enemy that cripples our minds, instead of freeing and equipping them (as is the very aim of education).  I believe that if we can reclaim education and bring it back to what it ought to be- to encourage students to see, encounter, and engage with what’s True- we might see a revolution in American and even Western culture in general.  If you’ve been through an undergraduate or graduate education program within the last fifty years, I imagine you might know what I’m talking about.  One huge philosophy of education that’s infiltrated our profession is the concept of Constructivism, which, according to a proponent of the method, Catherine Fosnot, “Does not assume the presence of an outside objective reality that is revealed to the learner, but rather that learners actively construct their own reality.”  Pearcey goes on to say that 

Teachers are not to tell students that their ideas are right or wrong, either, but merely to encourage them ‘to clarify and articulate their own understandings.’  Just as in values clarification, the teacher is left with no mechanism to adjucate between the answers students come up with.  Thirty different students may well offer thirty different answers, but each must be considered viable.

I’ve realized over the past year and a half, that in my exemplary preparation for the education field in a highly-acclaimed education program, these theories and ideas of student-centered learning and the absence of absolutes were presented to me as truth.  I remember sitting in my English methods courses and swallowing these ideas whole, elated at the idea that literature, free from the trite “rights and wrongs,” in my classroom could be used as an opportunity for exploration of meaning and truth.  The idea that it isn’t the author who creates meaning, nor the context or even the story itself, but the reader himself who constructs meaning from a text was initially exciting to me.  

Now I’ve realized that not only is this way of thinking dangerous, but that my unblinking conversion to the constructivist religion was so natural and easy, I hardly realized what I’d bought into.  Pearcey says that the goal of such educational methods is “to detach students from the moral teachings absorbed from outside, so that they will get in touch with their own personal, authentic values.”  Sound like America?  Everyone’s truth is self-generated- every man his own god.  I believe that this backwards way of thinking begins in the classroom, or at least is fed and nurtured there.  Tell a child that there’s no right and wrong- that whatever meaning and values he generates on his own are what’s best for him- and you’re bound to develop some incredibly ego-centric, backwards thinkers with no concept of universal truths.  We’re also reinforcing the Sacred/Secular divide in our culture without even knowing it.  My Bachelors of Science in Education indicates that my field of study is believed to be a “science”- a methods-based field taken over by philosophical naturalism.  Concrete.  Tangible.  Reasonable.  The arts and humanities within the American curricula (the English literature and fine arts part of what I do), in contrast, are held by philosophical idealism.  Romantic.  Idealistic.  Vague.  We begin the process of dividing our minds into two realms- the secular, naturalistic, and “provable” and the sacred, values-based, and “unprovable”- in the classroom.  So the maturing American thinker cannot help but build his very own wall separating the two, the foundational construct of his worldview.

Alright, I realize I’m all over the place here, so here’s the bottom line: I don’t think that education today is doing what it’s supposed to do.  Instead, I believe that our current educational philosophies are numbing our American minds to the Truth and contributing to the remarkable ease with which we subscribe to the comfortable falsehoods that will ultimately damn us.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  And I think that the Lord may be preparing me to be a small part of a revival in this secular field.  My time at West Nairobi School has allowed me to experiment in my classroom, outside of the U.S., working to discover in a safe place, free from most restrictions I would encounter in just about any other educational setting, filled with students from diverse backgrounds... what it is that education should be.  How do I teach literature, journalism, and theatre in a way that honors the Lord and what’s True?  What can I learn here and take back to the States when He eventually calls me back?

So there was my answer.  I can’t leave WNS just yet.  There’s still too much for me to learn and glean from my experience here.  And I feel that I have something to offer at this little international Christian school and I’m looking for revival.  There’s still so much work left to do.  I feel that the years that I spend here in Nairobi will ultimately serve as both a solid ministry to my students at WNS, as well as the first chapter of my professional life’s work.  

So thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and support, everyone.  I’m incredibly thankful for you and the part you play in what God’s doing here.  Merry [belated] Christmas, and may your new year bring blessings and vision for what’s next in your own lives as well.  Missing and praying for you all!