Classical Christian Education Has A Box-Checking Problem

American Christians are quick to believe a proverb about how it’s okay to do a lousy job. I have in mind sayings like: “90% of success in life is just showing up,” and, “Not perfect, just forgiven,” and, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” The “scruffy hospitality” fad of a decade ago—wherein numerous Christian think pieces used words like “earthy” and “incarnational” to justify not cleaning the bathroom before guests came over—drafted on the same ethos.     

While I have occasionally seen teachers use these proverbs and slogans to deflect criticism, I have more often noted their influence in a form of bureaucratic logic that I call “admin brain.” A school has material needs and it has spiritual needs, and “admin brain” is what happens when the two aren’t rightly divided. 

Let me explain. 

Administrators are chiefly responsible for the material operation of a school. They must ensure that payroll is met. They must ensure that an adult is present wherever large groups of students are gathered. For legal reasons, they must see that various regulations and requirements are satisfied. A great many of these material concerns merely need fulfilling—it hardly matters how. Administrators do not feel the need to put “their best man” on playground duty. The consistently hungover rookie will do just as well as the brilliant veteran. A light switch which is flipped clumsily will come on just as well as a light switch flipped with grace and style.   

So far, so good.  

However, a school also has spiritual and intellectual needs, and these needs must be treated very differently than its material needs. “Admin brain” is what happens when the spiritual and intellectual needs of a school are treated like material needs. Here are a few examples: 

One. To meet accreditation requirements, a school must have a faculty development program. Administrators cobble together a faculty development program that checks a box but isn’t any good and so every teacher despises it. The administrator knows the faculty development program is bad, but “anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” We’ll fix it later. Besides, the faculty development program doesn’t have to be enjoyable, profound, or humane. There’s some benefit in all the teachers just being physically located together in the same room once a week to hear the words “our community” pronounced in warm, worship-leader tones. “If a box needs to be checked,” the headmaster reasons, “whatever checks the box is good enough.”   

Two. A certain headmaster sees that other headmasters are gaining notoriety on LinkedIn by posting their interesting thoughts on conflict, communication, excellence, and leadership. The headmaster thinks, “I should post my thoughts about those subjects on LinkedIn,” and assumes that anything true he can say about leadership or excellence on LinkedIn will “get his name out there.” As opposed to saying interesting things, though, he makes bland observations like, “Good communication requires honesty. Without honesty, communication is futile and can even be harmful,” and, “Leadership requires two things: sacrifice and humility. Without humility, leadership becomes tyrannical. Without sacrifice, leadership destroys community.” A few other headmasters affirm his posts, but only to “get their names out there.” Teachers who work for that headmaster see his posts and think, “This guy is so full of cliches and platitudes. He never says anything genuinely interesting. How is he making twice as much as us?” They see that other headmasters affirm the banal observations their own headmaster makes. Cynicism grows.  

Three. A certain school headmaster hears about a school starting a mentoring program for young teachers. The headmaster thinks, “My school could do that, too,” and is more taken with the idea of announcing the mentoring program than in putting something together that actually helps young teachers. A mediocre mentoring program ensues, no one learns much.  

Four. A certain principal sees that another classical Christian school has a started a podcast. The principal says, “My school should have a podcast, too,” and is more taken with the idea of announcing, “Our school is launching a podcast,” than he is in creating a good and useful podcast that his community profits from. The podcast is not very good. No one listens to it. When the podcast dies a year later, the principal does not announce on LinkedIn, “That podcast we started last year was pretty bad, no one listened to it, and so we’re not going to do it anymore.” Still, other principals remember him announcing the podcast and think of doing likewise. 

In all four of these examples, administrators confused a spiritual need for a physical need. They assumed that any faculty development program was better than none. Any philosophical sounding LinkedIn post was better than none. Any mentoring program was better than none. Any podcast was better than no podcast—besides, they got to make an exciting announcement. There is little concern for making any of these things really good.  

However, the problem really isn’t the mediocre faculty development programs, the mediocre mentoring programs, and so forth. The real problem is the same tired excuse for it all.  

Internal criticisms of mediocrity in the classical Christian movement are invariably met with the same patronizing response: “This movement is young and we’re still finding our way—and yet we’ve already done so much good! Don’t despise the day of small beginnings. Did you know that classical Christian schools are opening in Some Foreign Country? Look, our schools aren’t perfect and they never will be, but God is still working through us. Just last week, a Chick-Fil-A manager called me just to say how polite our seniors were when they came in for lunch.” Classical Christian administrators have been banking hard on this “still young, but the movement has accomplished a lot” line of defense for many years now and, in the process, they have bequeathed to this movement a rather spectacular box-checking problem, by which I mean: faculty development programs that exist but suck, teacher appreciation weeks that exist but suck, house programs that exist but suck, student assemblies that exist but suck, thesis programs that exist but suck, theology programs that exist but suck, compensation packages that exist but suck.    

Worse still, all of these sucky programs are replicating quickly. 

This movement is growing so fast that many schools are now started by young, hungry go-getters who are so desperate for guidance that they’ll listen to any mildly assertive individual who speaks confidently about “what my classical school is doing.” Young headmasters assume the competence of old headmasters, even the ones desperate for affirmation on LinkedIn, and take for granted that anyone giving a presentation about faculty culture or house programs at a summer conference must know what they’re talking about. And yet, plenty of the people giving conference lectures entitled “How to Have a Productive House Program” oversee house programs that are despised by nearly everyone involved.  

Sometimes the people giving these lectures know their house program is terrible, but (innocently) reason that it’s “better than nothing,” or, “It’s still better than what they have in public schools.” After thirty years in classical Christian circles, I’ve come to realize that there are no public schools in this country. We have to abandon the term, and abandon the self-serving comparisons. There are only classical Christian schools in this country—some are faithful and some are apostate. What you think of as “the wretched public school down the street” is nothing more than a classical Christian school which made some bad decisions about curriculum and admission standards fifty years ago. There are Latin primers, stacks of Paradise Lost, and sane dress codes rotting in the boiler room of every Grover Cleveland High from New York to LA. Classical Christian schools have a single shield from apostasy: goodness. If your classical Christian school isn’t good, it has become whatever you think a public school is.  

There is now enough money, popularity, and privilege coursing through classical Christian education that the amateur hour defense about this being “a young movement” doesn’t cut it. That worked back in 1996 when classical schools met in the Sunday school wing of the local Church of Christ and survived on volunteer hours, but that era has come and gone. Today, a bad faculty development program isn’t better than nothing. A bad teacher appreciation week isn’t better than nothing. A bad classical Christian school isn’t better than nothing if it’s going to tarnish the reputation of classical Christian education and embitter half the people who work there.  

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?” asks the Lord, but how many of the leaders in this movement have clearly articulated what it would mean for classical Christian education to “lose its soul”? Most of the people who speak plainly about what it would mean for this movement to lose its soul are dismissed as elitists. The people who think the movement has already begun losing its soul are condemned as cynics—usually by the very same people who are gaining the world.  

So, what is to be done? 

Be honest. You probably can’t fix your faculty development program this week, but you can quit making excuses for it and just admit your faculty development program sucks. Imagine the headmaster getting in front of the faculty this Wednesday afternoon and saying, “Look, I know these meetings suck. I know you don’t want to discuss a chapter from some stupid book about classroom catechisms after working a full day. You’re tired. You’re played out. I apologize for not having a glass of wine to offer you. This meeting is adjourned. The next meeting we have is going to be the best meeting in years.” And then don’t hold another Wednesday meeting until you can back up that claim. If you did this, your teachers would forgive you of everything. They would baptize you in Gatorade and carry you off the field. It would be one of the most beautiful moments in your career.  

Also, you can quit telling prospective parents that your house program is “important for building community and fostering friendships across grade levels.” You can treat your teachers like they know what your salary is. You can quit acting like “just doing the minimum” is a heart problem for students but not for you. Leaders in this movement need to quit gathering at swanky hotels to talk about Patrick Lencioni and they need to start putting together some plausible answers to the question, “What can we do to keep the minivan-driving brain trust of this movement from getting any more cynical than they already are?”  

Collect some data. Give your teachers an anonymous survey and allow them to weigh in on the places where the school is just checking boxes. Ask them questions like, “On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means ‘A complete waste of time,’ and 10 means, ‘A wonderfully productive use of time,’ what number would you give to our Wednesday afternoon faculty meetings?” Just asking teachers this question will make them respect you more and pity you more, which means their answers will be inflated, so if the average response to this question is a 7.1, you can assume the real answer is about a 3. But ask about everything—the house program, the benefits package, the admissions standards. Figure out where your teachers think the hypocrisy is.  

Make a plan. You don’t have to solve every problem your school has right now, but you can get to work on the big stuff. After you’ve collected some data, begin chipping away at your lowest numbers. Give yourself a small, doable goal this year. Maybe it’s your faculty development program. Maybe it’s teacher appreciation week. Maybe your end of the year awards ceremony is a big, fat student-run mess. Quit telling teachers, “I am doing everything I can to get you the salaries you deserve,” and actually fix one real problem.  

Dream big. Once you quit making excuses, you’re free to repent and actually make things better—and don’t you want to make things better? Have you never been baffled by some sixteen-year-old boy for apathetically doing a bad job at an assigned task when he could have had more fun by going all out and doing a good job?  

Don’t you want to have the kind of faculty development program that your teachers brag about to their teacher friends in Kansas?  

You know how kids who didn’t do the reading last night have to white knuckle it through class the following day—don’t you want to not feel like that during teacher appreciation week this year?  

Take a little inspiration from your best teachers. If your school is worth its salt, you’ve got teachers who are doing everything they can to make class as good as possible for their students. They’re spending their own money buying gifts for their students. They’re spending their time making food for their students. They’re plotting elaborate festivals and field trips simply because they know their students will have a grand time. They’re sitting with their students at lunch just because it will make their students feel respected and cared for. You could do all that, too.