PURPOSE

God is the source of all reality and is therefore the source of all truth. Truth is that which corresponds to reality as proceeds from God. Truth does not change based on time, place, and circumstance. Truth is objective, absolute, knowable, and available to all. Feelings, social conditions, practices, progress, rhetoric, and lived experiences cannot make something true. Truth is not based on personal interpretation. For something to be true, it has to conform to God’s truth as revealed by God.

God is the source of all goodness. His character is reflected in His objective moral law, which is commanded for all mankind in Scripture. All humans break God’s moral law and need the power of the Holy Spirit to keep it. 

Good, evil, and guilt are determined by conformity to God’s moral law, not by ethnicity, social standing, or power. One person’s or group’s feelings do not prove sin or guilt. Sin cannot be reduced to oppression, and no one group is innocent from sin.

God is the source of all beauty, sets the standard for beauty in His own glory, and declares certain things beautiful. Beauty is objective, not subject to tastes or trends and not defined by ethnicity or culture. 

God commands mankind to love what is beautiful. Man can know beauty by comparing human creations to God’s Word and Creation. Acknowledging beauty, however, requires man to humble himself to God’s standard rather than a personal or cultural standard. 

Beauty must be orderly because God is a God of order. Beauty is just as important as truth and goodness. 

Humans are created in God’s image and created male or female at conception. Human life is sacred. Humans may not choose their sex, change sex, or be non-binary. 

All humans are fallen but still bear God’s image and have eternal souls. Humans do not belong to the state, are not cogs in a machine, and are not empty vessels or blank slates.

There is one race created by God–the human race. All ethnicities are members of the same human race, sharing equal dignity and intrinsic worth as fallen image-bearers. A person’s value is not measured according to ethnicity, sex, social standing, nation of birth, or any other personal declaration. Emphasizing unity and commonality as human beings promotes harmony and peace among ethnicities, whereas emphasizing ethnic differences in terms of identity or power fuels tension and racism.

The family is the foundational institution of a society originally instituted and ordained by God as one man and one woman in covenant relationship, the children who proceed from their one flesh union or are integrated via adoption, and other blood relations.

Children have been entrusted only to their parents by God, and by His Design parents have the primary responsibility to care for, nurture, train, teach, and disciple those children toward a life of service to God.

The institution of the family pre-exists government, and the state does not have the right to interfere with the family, to attempt to replace parents in the performance of their God-given duties, or to impose unbiblical definitions of family upon society and individuals. 

Education exists to pass down a way of life or set of behaviors through a body of knowledge. This body of knowledge is primarily transmitted through books, which are a repository of gathered wisdom through the ages, rather than through fallible experience, which propagates foolishness. Education does not exist to reconstruct society, to establish a world social order, to expose or solve problems in society, to realign power structures, to give people a voice, or to socially construct knowledge. 

True education forms not only the mind but also the will and affections. The goal of education is to build a rightly-ordered relationship of love between the student and the things of God–the True, Good, and Beautiful. Additionally, education should increasingly produce humility, wisdom, and worship of God. The goal of education is not self-love, self-actualization, self-awareness, information accumulation, or any utilitarian purpose such as social action, loyalty to the state, or job preparation. 

The student has the responsibility to discern everything through the lens of Scripture and hold fast to only that which conforms to Scripture. 

Education continues throughout life and, therefore, the goals and responsibilities of education are lifelong.

The teacher is a steward and an exemplar, rather than a tyrant, a mere mental disciplinarian, or an encourager of self-actualization. A teacher does not impose his own will, opinions, or tastes on the student but rather forms the tastes of the student by intentionally and carefully training him to appreciate the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. 

The teacher should recognize that God has created each student with different capacities and interests and should wisely cultivate his natural strengths, while guiding and directing the student to overcome his natural weaknesses and conquer his will. 

The teacher, while a fellow learner, has authority and wisdom that the student lacks. A teacher should, in sincerity, do his best to meet the standards and way of living he is presenting to the student. A disciple is not above his teacher, therefore the teacher should seek to walk worthy of his calling.

Art is man’s attempt to imitate the creativity of the Creator God. All beauty created and enjoyed by man on earth is indication of man’s desire for God in eternity.

True art leads the creator, observer, listener, or reader away from himself and instead points him toward the transcendent things of God, whereas manipulative art stimulates self-gratification and self-focus. Because the purpose of true art is to provide a glimpse of the objective True, Good, and Beautiful, the art chosen for education should be the art that best accomplishes this purpose.

Art is not mere self-expression, and the qualifications of art are not subjective or subject to judgment based on individual feelings, attitudes, or experiences. An artist’s social standing, sex, ethnicity, nation of birth, or experiences are not parameters for the study of art. Filth, chaos, and vulgarity cannot be considered art. 

God spoke the universe into existence through language. His words preceded the existence of all things. Therefore, an attack on language is an attack on God Himself.

The goal of language is to convey truth, not to assert power or superiority or to conceal unjust power dynamics. We should not use language to create discord and strife or to manipulate the hearer and confuse the meaning of words and phrases.

We refuse to compromise the use of prescriptive grammar, tell lies, or remain silent in order to affirm ideas with which we do not agree. 

Words are not mere collections of letters and sounds but instead are written and spoken depictions of reality that communicate ideas and carry inherent meaning. Reducing language to its simplest form and minimizing vocabulary atrophies a person’s ability to understand and express ideas. Such word control ultimately becomes thought control.

In literature, words create various word pictures that hang together and should reflect reality as proceeds from God. These word pictures expand a person’s ability to understand and express ideas. 

We acknowledge that the best literature directs the reader outside of himself as a window to the transcendent things of God rather than as a mirror in which the reader reflects inwardly or builds self-identity and self-love. It is not necessary for a child to see himself in literature in order to learn from, appreciate, or understand the material, nor is it necessary or even desirable that he see his own likeness in order to empathize with or be inspired by a character. Literature expresses a wide range of human emotions and experiences, across time and culture, available to anyone who would read. 

Personal preference does not determine the value of a work of literature, and neither personal feelings nor postmodern ideologies warrant the removal from the canon of any excellent quality literature that has stood the test of time.

History tells the unfolding human story as authored by God. As His Story, history should neither be revised or rewritten in an effort to manipulate the present or future, nor should it emphasize propaganda or calls to activism.  

History, while ultimately studied in totality, begins by teaching students all that is good and great about their nation, in order to foster a love of country, before introducing them to that which is wrong and offensive about their nation. Learning the history of other nations, while important, should not supplant an intimate knowledge of the history of one’s own country. Love for one’s own country contributes to a deeper appreciation and love for other nations and their citizens.

By interpreting the past with humility, we broaden our perspective and grow in wisdom. Humanity today does not possess more wisdom than people of the past, nor does history progress from inferior to superior. 

We are inhabitants of the world, but we are not global citizens. Instead, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, and our behavior in the earthly kingdom should be in light of our heavenly citizenship. We are first called to obey God rather than men. We are then called to live peaceably in sympathy and unity with our fellow man by demonstrating magnanimity, respect for and service to others, submission to authority, and self-government. This requires an acknowledgement that God grants citizens rights and liberties, which are accompanied by responsibilities. These liberties do not grant license or the ability to infringe upon the freedoms of our fellow man. In addition, citizens have an obligation to demonstrate discernment by carefully thinking through opinions rather than merely adopting those of others. 

Diversity in education comes through the use of many authors and artists from different perspectives throughout time, each gifted by God for His glory alone. Diversity does not require partiality or preferential treatment to any country, culture, ethnicity, or person. There is no quota of diversity that each teacher must meet.

We teach our children through written, visual, and auditory media created by people with expertise in and love for their field of knowledge. We do not take the author’s sex, ethnicity, and social standing into account, only the quality of their work. Choosing educational materials or tools based on the ethnicity or skin color of the author or characters is racist, based on the social standing of the author is partiality, and based on the sex of the author is sexist. 

Our choices of educational materials are determined by obeying God’s command to test everything and hold to only what is good, beneficial, and excellent, as compared to God’s objective standards of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Anything used in education should further the purpose and goals of education as stated above. 

Humility is the fear of God and leads to wisdom and honor. We are not our own but belong to God, and we are commanded to put on the mind of Christ, that is, humility. Humility includes recognizing our need for and reliance upon God, turning from pride, and valuing others above ourselves.

Humility is a prerequisite for all learning. Students must have a posture of humility in order to be able to learn, since learning requires the student’s focus on the object of study rather than on himself. Furthermore, educational methods should teach humility by requiring students to accurately articulate what an author has said before being permitted to set themselves up as a judge by expressing opinions, conclusions, or analysis.

Just as humility is the prerequisite of education, so increasing humility is a product of true education. As the student continually has his attention turned away from self and toward the transcendent things of God and as his heart and mind grow in love-relationship to those things, the student becomes magnanimous, able to rightly order his affections, and increasingly incapable of self-focus. 

Education is concerned not with self but with truth. Any true educational endeavor places feelings and ideologies in subjection to biblical truth and passes that truth to the next generation.