What’s Inside?
Article — Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Poetry — Napoleon
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Mankind is plagued with a short-term approach to life, because we do not like being uncomfortable or struggling. We want instant relief from whatever is bothering us so that we can have peace in our lives. Our Heavenly Father, on the other hand, holds a different view. His Word shows us that He holds a long-term approach to achieving His goals, and that approach applies to His children as well. So, the worldview we use for life will significantly affect how we choose to do the work He has given us to do.
Developing a worldview for how we do our jobs is not something that we think about much, is it? We think about what needs to be done and how we are going to do it, we think about what to bring to work for lunch, what the week will be like, and where we want to go on our next three day weekend, but how often do we think about the overall approach we have to our jobs? When was the last time you considered whether or not you were approaching your job with a short-term approach to accomplishing the objectives or a long-term approach? When was the last time you wrote down the overall purpose of your job and the long range approach to fulfilling that purpose? What is your worldview for doing your job?
Every job requires a short-term and a long-term approach, but it is the long-term that governs the short-term. For readers of The Classical Teacher, we have come to the point where the rubber meets the road. I challenge everyone reading this to consider the worldview approach to their job – the long-term approach. Write your thoughts down. Consider if the things you write down are things that you say or things that you mean. Think about how you carry out the things that you mean. Are you consistent? Successful? Have you gone off track in any area? Where can you do better?
As a Classical Christian teacher, I have to do this review every year, because every year, I face the same challenges, and over time, they have gotten more numerous and difficult to handle. I know where the problem areas will be for the most part and I gird myself for the ensuing battles praying for strength and courage to stand my ground. Why do I use such strong language? Is it really that serious? In my job, I am a part of a larger group of people engaged in kingdom building. My goal is to help train young people to be disciples of Christ and to be able to lead others to a saving knowledge of Christ through their lives and their work. As adults, the students in training will need to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. They will have to be able to discern lies from truth so that they can teach and lead others to the truth. Training of this sort is serious and incurs steady resistance from the enemy. Distorted thinking, misapplied reason, and weakness of character in leading others are challenges I face every day of every year. I never spend so much time on my knees in prayer as when I am teaching. We are engaged in a battle for the minds and souls of young people. Everyday we teach, we are challenged to hold the line.
Lest you think I use hyperbole, I challenge you to stand up in any room in America and present an alternative view to any aspect of education to those present. You will not be ignored, I promise. Everyone has an opinion on education, but have they thought their ideas through considering the long-term consequences?
After all the planning and philosophizing comes the implementation, which is always the hardest part of the job. We all face difficult scenarios in our jobs, and our long-term approach, if we have it and follow it, needs to govern our response to the present day issues that develop.
In education, the long-term approach is the only one that makes sense once we think about it, but it is also difficult to implement. For example, as a teacher, one day you will be teaching students in class – you have already set up your guidelines and gone over them with the class – and as you are teaching, a couple of students in the class start talking every time you start talking. When you stop talking and look at them, they quit talking. When you start talking again, they start talking again. Is it really that big of a deal and worth making a point to correct their behavior? Or is ignoring the disruption to yourself and other students a better approach? You can avoid conflict if you choose the latter and the former will require confrontation. What do you do? What are the long-term consequences of your decision?
Another rubber meets the road example occurs when you give the class an assignment that requires students to think through ideas and explain them well in writing. A couple of things happen when you get the answers back. If it is the first assignment of the school year, most of the answers will likely be poorly written. The answers will look like very little work went into them and the students did the least amount possible. Another possibility is that a group of students may have colluded through group chat and written the same wrong, bad answer. You can give them higher grades for effort to avoid having to give bad grades for not meeting the objectives of the assignment. If you give bad, but well-deserved grades, it will take more work to teach them how to write the answers well, tutoring after school or during lunch possibly, and grief for handing out poor or failing grades. What do you do? Whose best interest do you look out for? Yours the students? And how is “best interest” defined?
What do you do when, not if, a parent or a student writes to you or speaks with you in person and claims that you are ruining their chances of getting into their dream college and getting a scholarship because you keep giving them Bs on their difficult assignments. Then they add that you are the only teacher in whose class the student does not have an A? Giving out As makes teachers popular, grading takes less time, and they do not have to do tutoring or meet with angry parents. Hmmm . . .
Imagine that you are putting in the final grades for the semester and you realize that a student who has failed 80% of the exams and who does not complete the homework assignments very well, has earned a 68 or 69 for the semester. You know that giving them a 70 will encourage them to keep doing the least amount possible. You know the student will be unhappy with the grade and the parents, too, and you may get grief for it. Your administrator is unhappy about your decision, because he/she has to deal with it as well, and he/she pressures you to change the grade in order to avoid grief all around. The consequence in high school is that the student will have to attend summer school or have pressure on them in the spring semester to get a higher grade to balance out the F. The grief associated with this decision will have short-term effects that last many months. The anger and resentment could last quite a while and the thought of seeing the student in class everyday is uncomfortable. If you just change a couple of numbers slightly no one will be the wiser and you can enjoy your Christmas vacation and the rest of the year. What do you do?
What if the student is a senior and he/she cheats on an exam or project and your F will prevent them from graduating with their class? What is the important point here? The student's character development or the peace that will come by ignoring their behavior? Will you really prevent a student from graduating with their class for an immature and unwise mistake? Are you sharing the love of Christ by holding a student accountable for a relatively stupid mistake? When is it easier for a child to learn a difficult lesson — when they are younger or when they are older and the consequences are more serious? If you do not help them to learn to be honest now, will anybody else care to do it in the future? Could your actions today help them change course and prevent future trouble in the future? What do you do?
You will have students and parents tell you that they are trying really hard so they should get better grades. Students will cheat on homework assignments and plagiarize papers. You will witness students treating each other meanly. Boys and girls will act inappropriately with each other in the hallway and at dances. Students will regularly be out of dress code and they show up at your door at the end of the day, out of dress code, and tell you no one corrected them all day. You tell students to get their supplies out everyday first thing and half of them do not and then the class has to wait for them to get ready for class. What do you do? Is the confrontation and conflict that often comes with it really worth it? Why can you not just teach the teachable and let those not trying their best learn from their mistakes later on? (If we were dealing with adults, maybe that philosophy would work, but we are dealing with children.) Is not the “let it go” approach kinder, gentler, and more loving? Is the trouble worth it? What is your purpose as a teacher? What do you do?
Your long-term approach to teaching will govern your short-term approach to all of the issues mentioned above, in which most occur regularly in a teacher’s professional life. What do you do when people do not like your approach to short-term issues and accuse you of being harsh or strict and if they are really angry, they tell you that you are mean, a terrible teacher, and an uncaring human being? Why would you give yourself extra work to do for the sake of students who should have tried or behaved better in the first place? Is holding students accountable really the loving thing to do and/or the best use of your time? What is your purpose as a Classical Christian teacher? What do you do?
You have to decide ahead of time how you will handle these situations. You cannot wait until you are in the moment to figure out what to do. You have to develop a Biblical worldview of teaching in order to be an effective leader in your classroom and as a Christian adult in the life of your students. Your worldview of teaching is determined by deciding the purposes of Classical Christian teaching and how you will implement the plan to achieve those purposes.
Will you adopt a short-term approach or a long-term approach to issues that arise? The short-term approach is what I call the path of least resistance. The short-term approach encapsulates the immediate issue being sorted out in a way that leads to the least amount of grief for everyone. The long-term approach is the Biblical approach that our Heavenly Father has modeled for us. The long-term path is looking ahead and thinking through the long-term consequences of your actions. Which yields the best results?
Before you give that assignment, before you grade those papers, before you correct any behaviors, before you even have children in your class, you have to be thinking about the long-term effects of your actions. In our culture today, there is a strong push to indulge children so that in the short-term their lives, and consequently, our lives, are easier. Often little thought to the long-term consequences occurs. I think that some of the last bastions of long-term approach to training children are the home schools and the Classical and Christian schools, but they are being seriously challenged by well–meaning, but misguided adults who think that indulging children is harmless and the best way to show them love.
How does our Heavenly Father deal with us? He uses a long-term approach with His children even as He meets our short-term needs. When we have to deal with the real consequences of our decisions or the general sin in the world that causes us to suffer, He goes through the pain with us, but He does not relieve it most of the time. He knows that pain, failure, struggle, and perseverance are the most effective ways for us to learn to obey Him, to love Him, to serve Him, and to help our minds understand His mind.
In an educational setting, the long-term approach to academic and behavioral training can be pretty uncomfortable at times. Do you have the right mindset to withstand the heat? Do you have the strength of conviction that your approach is right in order to face resistance and wait for the long-term consequences to take effect? Are you going to do your job and lead at the same time, or just do your job and take the path of least resistance?
Deciding between a short-term and a long-term approach to training children really all boils down to leadership. As a Christian, you are called to lead. It is often not easy, uncomfortable, and downright hard at times, but the effects of leading using a long-term approach are always fantastic. The Lord does amazing things in the lives of children when His long-term policies are implemented. Where the rubber is meeting the road, pray the Lord would bring about his purposes in the children’s lives under your influence and just wait . . . If you hold on to the end you will see miracles of change and miracles of development that go beyond your own imagining.
Remember, no matter what occupation the Lord has called us to, it is not about us. It is all about serving the Lord and being used by Him to bring about His purposes. Maybe this last point will be the perspective most helpful to us in deciding which path to take.
Napoleon
Children, when was Napoleon Bonaparte born, asks teacher.
A thousand years ago, the children say.
A hundred years ago, the children say.
Last year, the children say.
No one knows.
Children, what did Napoleon Bonaparte do, asks teacher.
Won a war, the children say.
Lost a war, the children say.
No one knows.
Our butcher had a dog called Napoleon, says Frantisek.
The butcher used to beat him and the dog died of hunger a year ago.
And all the children are now sorry for Napoleon.