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An assignment from my Christian Education class. * The following information pertains specifically to the development of Christian education and education in general from Western history. The development of education in the Eastern world takes a drastically different path than that of us, their Western counterparts. And while many of you may view this overview of history and thought as irrelevant to Christian education, this description of the different eras of thinking is intricatelly connected to how we view Christian education in our own day and age. This is a rather lengthy discussion that I have prepared, so if you�d like you can skip over it all together. I�m not in any way trying to suck up with the length of my post, but I really got engrossed in the topic and ended up with this rather drawn-out explanation. It seems to me that Christian education throughout history usually leans in one of two directions. One being a community approach to learning that is both social and collective in focus. And another way being an individual approach to learning that is private and separate from the community. A brief look back through history (and the textbook does a good job of explaining this from a Christian education perspective) shows that there are four main and distinct time periods that characterize the thought, cultural climate, epistemology (way of knowing), and religion of that time. These being the Ancient (2500 BC-100 AD), Pre-Modern or Medieval (100-1500), Modern (1500-2000), and Post-Modern (2000-present) eras. While these are broad strokes and generalizations of the time, these eras express the different ways people have thought from one time period to the next. Education and learning, which began in the Ancient period, was very community focused. Learning was done strictly in the midst of a community of like-minded people who studied knowledge as it was pass down to them through heritage and tradition. �The ritual observances of the community and the home life of children were the primary vehicles for transmission of the God-centered culture.� (Anthony, p.40) Evidence of this is seen in the Jewish believers in the Old Testament. Very rarely in the OT did you see an individual wandering off on his own to develop new thoughts, ideas, or doctrines. The Jewish believers were wholly immersed in the Ancient era and therefore expressed this community mindset. Therefore, whenever you do see the Jewish people wandering from the faith in the Old Testament, you usually see the entire group or nation drifting off to develop new thoughts, ideas, or doctrines. Their view of communal learning was both good and bad. It was good because it forced them to stay grounded in the tradition and truth that had been passed down to them through the ages. This kept them from venturing out to �invent� or �interpret� God and the Scriptures any way that they wanted to. This is evident in the way they received the Word of God. They didn�t have a copy of the Law sitting on the coffee table at home. Instead, they depended on the priests and religious rulers to interpret the Scriptures for them and provide them with a framework for education and living that had been passed down through the ages. That is why whenever the Law was read and it said �It is written�, there was no room for debate or varying interpretations as to what that passage meant to the people. This kept the people grounded in the Word and under the God-ordained authority structures that He had set up to maintain purity of Truth. It was also good because the Ancient people saw education in all of life, not just a classroom. �In contrast to the school-based education . . . Hebrew education pervaded the lives of all people.� (Anthony, p.40) However, this view of communal learning was bad for some obvious reasons. One is that whenever the group drifted off in to sin, everyone usually went together without asking many questions. They all stuck together and whatever they did, they did as a group for the most part. And while it was good that they were in a position to submit to the authority structures and traditions of the past when it came to interpreting the Law, at times these structures had become apathetic in maintaining the Law that had been passed down or either the religious rulers had become corrupt which compromised the Truth being passed down to the �common man�. So this type of learning that was rooted in a community approach had both positives and negatives to it. However, with the rise of the Greek and Roman worlds this Ancient approach to learning slowly began to disappear wherever the shadow of these empires fell. Only in small pockets, usually religious Jewish communities, did the Ancient approach to learning stay in tack. With the introduction of Western philosophical thought that Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, etc. developed, the focus of learning shifted from the community and to the individual. (An interesting side note to study is that Eastern thought and learning never fully went through the transition from the Ancient world to the Pre-modern world of the Greeks and Romans. Even today, most Eastern countries are more Ancient in their approach to learning than anywhere else. They still depend and rely on the immediate and extended family to help shape and instill values in their children.) During this time period in history, education and learning broke away from the mold that it had followed for all of history thus far and began to focus on what the individual could know �himself�. Truth became more and more abstract (Anthony, p.42) and distant from reality. It now focused more on the philosophical quest for truth. The �emphasis shifted from faithful Christian living to scholarly reflection�. (Anthony, p.44) Education and the conveying of values which had formerly been taught in the home and religious communities moved to the modern university which began to teach the Greek and Roman way of life. (Although the Greek and Roman way of life was different in many ways and comprise two different time periods, both are characterized by their emphasis on the individual�s thinking.) This way of life as seen in their thought and culture was spread all over the known world by Constantine. His conquests forced this way of learning and individualistic thinking on the remaining pockets of people who still were still Ancient by nature. While this Greek and Roman form of thinking and learning was in its infant stages, it would come to full fruition with the rise of the Modern world that was birthed to us by the Enlightenment. I�d like to stop for a moment and take a look at a model of education that was taking place during this time. This movement ran countercurrent to the Roman model of education that was quickly spreading. As Greek and Roman thought began to expand throughout the West, a small group of people in Ireland held onto the Ancient model of education. Because Ireland was an island and its population �barbaric�, Western thought very rarely attempted to cross over to them. Through the ministry of St. Patrick, the Irish began to display a hybrid form of Ancient education. Monastic communities began to form in opposition to the Romanized version of Christianity that focused on the individual. These communities were created by St. Patrick in order to educate the barbarian Irish with Christianity. �The monastic communities produced a less individualistic approach and more community-approach to the Christian life.� (Hunter, p.30) These monastic communities in Medieval Ireland and the way they thought, operated, and experienced God and education were a close parallel to the Ancient Jewish culture. Take for example the Celtic way of evangelism and education (a more Ancient way) versus the Roman way of evangelism and education (a more Modern way, a way much like ours today). The Roman model for reaching people (who were �civilized� enough) was to (1) present the Christian message; (2) Invite them to decide to believe in Christ and become Christians; and (3) If they decide positively, welcome them into your community and fellowship. The Roman model seems very logical to us because most American evangelical are apart of this paradigm! We explain the gospel, they accept Christ, we welcome them into the church. Presentation, Decision, Assimilation. Its information that leads to education. Now take a look at the Celtic model: (1) You first establish community with people and bring them into fellowship with you. (2) Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer, and worship. (3) In time, as they discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit. (Hunter) Its community that leads to education, with information under girding the structure. While the Celtic way is in no way an exact replication of the New Testament model, I do think it is a closer mirror to it than that of our Roman/Modern way that we currently using. The Celtic way of evangelism and discipleship (Christian education) relies heavily on the community to positively shape those who are attempting to be reached. Another interesting thing about these Celtic communities is that after the Dark Ages were over with, the Celts were the one who went out to �re-evangelize� and �re-educate� the West. During the fall of Rome, the Germanic tribes that invaded burned most of the libraries and documents of the Western world. And because of their �barbaric� mindset, education in the West came to a screeching halt. But as the Dark Ages came to an end, the Irish, who had preserved many of the original documents and writings of the Roman world, ventured out and helped reestablish many of the educational systems that are still in place today. (Cahill) While in the Modern Period (which I am about to discuss), the Roman, systematic way worked of education worked. While in the Postmodern world, perhaps the Celtic way is a better fit. The Enlightenment and Modern era emerged as a result of many different things. This period in time dealt the final blow to the Ancient way of learning in the Western world. Roman thought had now permeated every area of the Western world. The development of the printing press put the Bible and other books of knowledge into the hands of the people for the first time. Scripture, history, science, art, etc. could all now be interpreted however one saw fit. Man no longer needed community or tradition in the educational process. All he needed was some good books (that he could now cheaply afford) and his own human reasoning skills. �I think, therefore I am�, (Descartes) now became the anthem for a new generation of learners. The view that �Knowledge is power�, (Francis Bacon) elevated human reasoning to a whole new level. Ethics, objective truth, and faithful living all became secondary to knowledge. The interpretation of the Bible and thus Christian education was no longer primarily about the study of objective knowledge and the practice of it that was intricately connected, but became subjective as the learner wanted to know what Scripture was saying to �ME� � detached from what had been taught throughout church history and what was being said to the community as a whole. Because of this, Christian education began to shift even more so in the direction of the individual. So on that front Scripture was interpreted by the individual and Christian education was done on this level. On another front, the rise of science and logic displaced the authority of the Bible as objective Truth. With the rise of modernity, rationalism and individualism became the standard for education. Community still played a role, but not in the way that it had in the Ancient world. The role that community played now was negated by the fact that like-minded people now made up these groups. These communities were divided along lines of interpretation. If you believed science could interpret the world and meaning you went one way. If you believed that God could interpret the world and meaning you went another. Even within the Christian �camp�, communities were divided along even sharper lines. Because there was now no continuity of doctrine, individual interpretations became the norm. Thus, denominations and groups splintered off from one another at a dizzying pace. Learning and education was now focused entirely on what one knew. No longer was education considered a �success� unless the knowledge was known. The more you knew, the more educated you were. Education to the Modern world was and still is viewed as knowledge. C.S. Lewis and Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas disagree with this definition of successful education and wrote that education should only be deemed successful if it creates faithful living. With education being viewed in this light, the destruction of values and truth began to crumble over the next 500 years as Western societies became more and more �enlightened� (and I use that term sarcastically) with science and rationalism. Sadly, the church adopted this approach, albeit with a different angle. While they wouldn�t go as far as their secular counterparts in their conclusions, they too viewed education as an individual thing. Their educational approach to God and theology followed many of the same lines of modern thinking. God was rational. God was logical. God was explainable. One could now apply the scientific method in order to prove God. Much like scientists we began to study God as an object to glean facts or points for sermons. Armed with modern hermeneutical tools, modern Christians could �dig� much like the scientific world would do when they would strip mine mountains for resources. When the mining was done and the information extracted, everything could be left to waste as they moved onto another area to �dig�. This is an educational approach that would have been foreign to the Ancient world of the Hebrews who viewed Christian education as a holistic change of one�s life, not just mind. But a funny thing started to happen in the early mid-1900s. While the Enlightenment brought to us countless changes in the scientific world and helped our thinking evolve in a more disciplined and systematic way, the Modern Period began to crumble. In the middle part of the nineteenth century, a lot of people began to get disillusioned with the way the world was viewed. Two World Wars that brought the idea that the world and its people were continually moving forward in the process of �enlightenment� came crashing down. People began to see that their individualistic thinking had not led to a better world, but in fact had led to a world void of values and character because of the relative thinking of each individual. After Hitler, Stalin, and countless others, one could no longer say, �If it works for you, then it must be true.� While our science and technology was progressing upwards, our morals were spiraling downwards. As people became more and more disillusioned with the reality of the 20th century, many secular theorists and Christian theologians began to deconstruct the modern way of thinking and reconstruct a new way of thinking. This deconstruction is drastically important to how we view Christian education and education in general. No longer can Christian education be focused on knowledge, knowledge, and more knowledge and then how that knowledge affects the individual. Instead Christian education must begin to take a much more ancient-future approach to learning that is focused on the transformation of lives, with the help of knowledge, in the midst of biblical communities. The term �ancient-future� is used because our approach needs to be more ancient than it currently is, much like the Jewish and Christian educational approach of the Old and New Testaments. But since we can never go back to that point, and because we learned many positive things about education from the Pre-Modern and Modern periods, we must begin to press forward into the future with how we educate and think. We are in a transitional age, with half of the world�s population in the Modern world and half of it in the Postmodern world. During this stage in history, it would be wise of us to tailor our Christian educational ministries to those 25 and younger (postmoderns) and not only to those grounded in Modern thinking. This is not to say that we need to be relative or subjective in our teaching by any means. It simply means that we need to learn how this younger generation thinks and learns differently than us, and then design educational ministries that assist the spiritual growth process. Secular education has begun to address this new way of learning (although I think they may have been about 20 years to late) by involving media, narratives, group (community) projects, dialogue (not monologue), among many others to help engage today�s kids who think and learn in ways that are drastically different than ours. If secular education is changing the methods and approaches they use to educate, then it would be a shame for us to not at least consider rethinking the way we approach Christian education in the present and how it will be done in the future. Sources: A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball Foundations of Ministry by Michael Anthony The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter III How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill Unleashing the Scripture by Stanley Hauerwas Ancient-Future Faith by Robert Webber