During the enrollment season, I have the privilege of observing how visiting parents think of the role of faith in their child’s education.
When parents come to my office with the possibility of enrolling their children, it is nearly impossible to “hide” their Christian faith because I ask about it in various ways.
Most parents say that they are withdrawing their children from public school out of their concern for various forms of immorality, including same-sex marriage and LGBTQ. Most parents also ask about what kind of colleges our graduates go to. Most parents also ask about the programs we have, whether they are rigorous enough for their children.
However, when I talk about how our students grow in wisdom and virtue, they all agree that it is a good thing, but they rarely keep asking what that entails. The same with Christian worldview. When I share stories about how students are growing in their personal faith in Christ and in their ability to understand and articulate their faith to others, they get impressed, but rarely pursue the line of question. When I talk about how amazing our Juniors and Seniors are in their Junior/Senior Thesis presentations, how they speak with grace, wit, and power to a live audience of parents and peers, they nod their heads, but rarely ask more questions.
All this experience confirms a trend that we see in the larger society: More and more, our society is becoming secularized, and parents genuinely do not really understand the goals of classical, Christian education. They have their own goals, most of which rarely require genuine faith in Christ.
In contrast to this trend, I see a clear trend among our Veritas students and parents that they are growing in applying their faith in the education of their children. Increasingly, they believe it is their responsibility to provide a Christian education (cf. Eph 6:4). They understand the covenantal principle in the Bible that God will bless their children based on parents’ faith and obedience to God to raise their children in the Lord (cf. Gen 18:19). Increasingly, they realize that we cannot have it both ways: the worldly goals and God’s goals for our children, and that God’s goals for our children are far greater in every way than what the world can offer (cf. see Cardus study here). Parents also grow in their realization that genuinely happy, brilliant, and effective leaders of our society are formed only when their children are deeply rooted in their Christian faith. And lastly, Veritas parents slowly realize that their faith is also growing, and their vision of education is changing to more align with God’s vision. May the Lord continue to open the eyes of faith of all the parents to see the great blessings God has in store for our children!