Controversial Sayings

Students: Mr. Gibbs, do you think the church should have political power?

Gibbs: Why do you ask?

Students: I don’t know.

Gibbs: Do you just want to hear me say something controversial?

Students: Yes.

Gibbs: Then I’ll do you one better. I think the church should have spiritual power.

The Limits Of Nurture

“In what ways are gardening metaphors helpful in understanding what happens at a classical Christian school? Well, a classical education is not chiefly concerned with the transference of information. It is not about getting data from the teacher’s brain into the student’s brain. Instead, a classical education is about nurturing a student, by which I mean encouraging the innate desires to know, love, and serve which drive every human heart, but which have been marred and disfigured by sin. In the same way a man cannot force his flowers to bloom, neither can a teacher force a student to be virtuous. Instead, cultivating virtue in students means creating conditions which are favorable to growth. “God gives the increase,” be it in an orchard or a classroom, which means the teacher plants and waters and lives in hope, not certainty, that fruitful life will emerge where they have sown their prayers and lessons.

While gardening metaphors have value, they also have limits. How so? Well, plants do not cheat on geometry tests or look at pornography on their phones at lunch. A wax begonia will not pee all over the floor of the boy’s bathroom just for a laugh. There is no rose bush out there whose mother thinks it is going to Yale. Plants do not have feelings which mean they don’t respond to criticism or encouragement. Simply put, plants do not sin.

It is the issue of sin which places limits on the usefulness of gardening metaphors for education.” 

-from Nurturing, Cultivating, Growing: Gardening Metaphors Have Gone Way Too Far, my latest for CiRCE

Teaching Students To Handle Stress

“If you’re not a high school teacher, you might not appreciate the extent to which the fear of stress now dominates the academic landscape. What is true outside of school is true inside, as well, and stress is the great villain of our time. It is the root of all evil, all mental and physical health problems. Teachers hear quite a lot from parents and administrators about stress. Homework is stressful. Grades are stressful. A packed schedule is stressful. Even going to class is stressful—so stressful, in fact, that most teachers have a few students who occasionally skip school just to stay home and unwind. The “mental health days” that were a joke twenty-five years ago have become a dire medical necessity. Of course, skipping class makes those students get behind on their work, and getting behind on their work is stressful, too, hence skipping class now creates the need to skip class later.”

-from Teaching Students To Handle Stress, my latest for CiRCE

“So Your Parents are Thinking of Sending You to a Classical Christian School” Is Available Now

The new pamphlet for prospective students is available now on Gibbs Classical. Head over to Gibbs Classical and read lengthy excerpts and reviews.

An excerpt from the pamphlet:

“There are many different kinds of Christians. There are Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and hundreds of other denominations. Most classical Christian schools are open to people of just about any denomination. For the moment, though, I would like to speak about just two kinds of Christians: Christians who go to church every Sunday and Christians who don’t. 

When I refer to Christians who go to church every Sunday, I mean every Sunday. They might very occasionally miss church because of illness, but that’s pretty much the only reason they think legitimate for not being in church on Sunday morning. Week after week, month after month, year after year, they can be found in a church on Sunday morning. Let’s call these sorts of people Every-Sunday Christians. 

When I say there are also Christians who don’t go to church every Sunday, I mean they go to church every so often. They might go once or twice a month, but they might also let six or seven weeks go by without making it to church. Let’s call these sorts of people Every-So-Often Christians. 

Regardless of what sort of church you go to, this school takes an approach to Christianity which is really only going to make sense to Every-Sunday Christians. Every-So-Often Christians will find themselves frustrated and confused by the sort of claims the teachers at this school make about Christianity. My intention in this pamphlet is not to argue that you should be an Every-Sunday Christian. I’m simply saying that at this school, Christianity is practiced and preached as an Every-Sunday sort of thing.  

Let me explain. 

Every-Sunday Christians don’t go to church every Sunday because they feel like it. They wake up on Sunday morning tired, wanting to go back to bed. And when they get up on Sunday morning, they have plenty of little projects around the house they would like to start on, and they have hobbies they’d like to fuss with, and unfinished work that needs to be ready by Monday. They do not feel like going to church, but they go anyway because they believe it is their duty. 

Because they believe going to church is a duty, they do not have to decide on Saturday night or Sunday morning whether they are going to church or not. They already know they’re going. They have made a decision (years ago) to always go to church on Sunday. 

Every-So-Often Christians do not regard church attendance as a duty or an obligation, which is to say church attendance is not a priority. Instead, going to church is a thing they do when they feel like it, and they do not often feel like going to church. For this reason, Every-So-Often Christian families are less likely than Every-Sunday Christian families to pray together in the evening or read the Bible together on a daily basis. All of this makes Every-So-Often Christians much less inclined to talk about God on a regular basis, or to discuss the commands and precepts of God when thinking through important matters. If a certain person only attends church when he feels like it, he does not want his religion to inconvenience him, which means that when the teachings of Scripture become difficult to follow (because they are unpopular or thought “outdated”), the Every-So-Often Christian is more likely than the Every-Sunday Christian to simply do what is easy and popular.”     

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