16,000 Hours to Change the World(view)
Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.
by Ryan Horn
world·view | \ ˈwərl(d)-ˌvyü \ : a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint[1]
As a Christian, I would suggest that there are only two types of worldviews available to humanity. The first is a Christian worldview grounded in Biblical principles and concepts of the proper relationship between the Creator and the creation. The second would be a humanist worldview falling into two broad categories of false religion and secular humanism. False religions developed by man will lack an accurate understanding of man’s relationship to his Creator. Secular humanism promotes ideas that describe humanity as “undesigned, unintended beings who arose through evolution, possessing unique attributes of self awareness and moral agency” and as something that “celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her own life.”[2]
As Christian parents, the Bible instructs us to “Train up a child in the way he should go…”[3] and reminds us to “Take these words to heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you’re at home or away, when you lie down or get up.”[4] Jesus’ words continue to emphasize the importance of children when stating, “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea.”[5] The Bible leaves little doubt as to the importance God places on the rearing of children, and we have a responsibility to help shape our children in the development of their identities, moralities, and general worldview.
While parents have a great deal of influence on the development of children, we also partner with other people and organizations to participate with us, including family, friends, coaches, churches, and schools. Each of these mentors we allow into our children’s lives contributes to
their development in varying degrees, often positively correlated to the quantity of time spent with them. If more time with children wields greater influence in their development, it is important to understand where children spend their time and what ideas are being
incorporated in their personal and worldview development. And there are few places that children spend more time than in school.
16,000. That is the average number of hours a child spends in school in the United States between kindergarten and graduating the twelfth grade. That number goes even higher when you include extracurricular activities such as sports, clubs, etc. Those hours are actively spent by educators training and instilling ideas and concepts of the world. We teach our children that they can trust their teachers as caring adults when they are in their early elementary years. As they mature into middle school and high school, children naturally tend to pull away from parents to begin testing the concepts and boundaries of independence. It is at these times when some other adult person, often a teacher, holds great sway with children.
To draw a comparison, a child attending church two hours a week during the same time period will spend 1,352 hours under the teaching of someone with a Christian worldview. What a child hears in school either supports a Christian worldview or opposes it and does so by a factor of twelve over the church.
In the United States, every child has access to the public education system funded by tax revenues. The question must be asked, “Is what the American public school system teaching our children congruent with our Christian beliefs?” Generally speaking, I would say it is not and would contend that public education is not neutral in its position toward a Christian worldview, but rather, it finds itself in direct opposition to it. While there are many public-school
educators who are followers of Jesus, they are prohibited from incorporating faith and must teach from an entirely secular curriculum.
Public education has become steeped in secular humanist ideas. In 1930, humanist Charles F. Potter wrote, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”[6]
And a little over fifty years later, John J. Dunphy wraps up his essay “A Religion for a New Age” in the following manner:
“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanists values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level — preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of “love thy neighbor” will finally be achieved.[7]”
Children spend 16,000 hours in a place where truth has become a relative concept, where there are no moral absolutes, where identity is fluid, and where without a Creator, humans are nothing but “accidents” of the universe. When no truth or purpose exists, is it any wonder why children are confused and teen depression continues to increase? Secular schools are focused on the development of the body and the mind, but humans consist of more than that. The spirit must be nurtured as well.
A Christian school is the only institution that is equipped to address the development of the whole child consisting of body, mind, and spirit. If we want our children to develop a Christian worldview, surrender themselves to Jesus as King, and be Kingdom minded (which is a 180 degree turn from the world mindset), then being taught those ideals throughout their schooling would help to instill them. Maybe even more important than being taught Christian concepts is having teachers who can live out the Christian life in community with them every day. The only place this can happen in a consistent and open setting is within the walls of a Christian school.
The challenges that the local Christian school face are many, but I can distill them down to apathy and funding. The first one I find most disturbing—the lack of support from the local church. I’m not referring to monetary support but rather to an attitude of ambivalence from pastors. I can’t think of two institutions that should work more closely together than the Christian church and the Christian school in preparing young people for service in God’s kingdom. It has been my experience that some pastors do not want to risk offending a congregation, who overwhelmingly choose a public education for their children, by endorsing it. At times there is even sense of competition between the two.
Lack of funding is another significant challenge for the average Christian school. In the United States, there is no public money used to support faith-based schools. That means each school must raise its own operating funds by charging tuition, but tuition rarely covers the full costs of running the school. It’s not uncommon to see tuition cover only 80% of expenses with the rest coming from fundraising and gifts.
Because of the limited funding, faculty and staff who have chosen to serve in Christian schools often work for significantly less pay than their counterparts in the public-school systems. These are people who forego greater compensation to pour their lives into teaching a subject that incorporates the wholeness of a Christian worldview. They do it out of their love for God and their love for teaching kids, and they make all the difference.
Tuition can often be a deterrent for families who would like to send their children to a Christian school but are concerned of the financial impact. This can be a very legitimate reason, but many schools I’m familiar with will bend over backward to try and find a way to help those families who desire that for their children. There are often financial aid and scholarships made available; however, that ultimately reduces the operating funds available to the school.
Many of the financial issues facing Christian schools would be addressed merely by increasing the numbers of students on their rolls, as fixed costs do not rise in proportion with additional students. Similar costs covered by more students could even lead to a decrease in tuition rates or an increase in available financial aid and scholarships. This would also lead to better compensation for the faculty and staff working within the school. While the financial solution is easy to see, it is dependent on addressing the general sense of apathy in the Christian church and community.
My ask to the members of the CEF community is twofold:
Use your leadership skills to encourage local churches to partner with their local Christian schools and to work together to train our children “in the way they should go.”
Consider offering financial support to your local Christian school.
I have watched Christian teachers pour their lives into children and show them the love of Jesus while teaching them about the world He created. I have witnessed the change in perception of self-worth when students come to understand that they are not “accidents” but are loved and designed with purpose and a destiny. I have seen a community of believers come together to support children and each other as we train the next generation of Kingdom minded believers.
As parents, we have 16,000 hours for which we must make a choice on behalf of our children. Those hours can be used to reinforce the values and views of the world, or those 16,000 hours can be used to instill a greater view that will change the world.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worldview
[2] https://secularhumanism.org/what-is-secular-humanism/
[3] Proverbs 22:6
[4] Deuteronomy 6:5-9
[5] Matthew 18:5-6
[6] Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion,” 1930 pg. 128
[7] https://johnjdunphy.medium.com/a-religion-for-a-new-age-f812839c4cb8