I need to
get something off my chest. For some
reason marketing that takes secular company logos and turns them into
"Jesus themed" words has always left me a little unsettled. I'm not sure why, because there is nothing essentially
wrong with it, but it has never felt quite right. I’m sure you’ve seen these shirts:
Just as my role as a father causes me to view
the world differently, my role as president at OCA forces me to see everything
through a different lens. I’m constantly
wondering how others see and perceive us, and these types of marketing schemes
make me wonder about the way our school is perceived. I guess I’m most concerned that there are
people out there who view Christian education as a knock-off marketing scheme,
just adding Christianity on top of the average public school model. If this is true it causes some terrible
problems for Christian education, because we would be a knock-off version of a
broken system. Let me share some statistics about our nation’s public
school system with you that I found in CreativeSchools by Dr. Ken Robinson (2015).
- 70,000 students drop out of school every day (p. 20).
- 1.5 million students drop out of school per year (p. 20).
- Half of African American and Latino students drop out of school every year (p.21).
- 40% of teachers leave the profession after the first 5 years (p. 21).
- The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. (p. 22). Roughly 1 in 35 adults.
- More than two-thirds of male prisoners do not have a high school diploma.
- 63% of students who stay in school report boredom and disengagement (p. 23).
- 40% of college students do not graduate
- In the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60% (p. 23). Suicide is the third leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15 and 44.Some would attribute this to the overwhelming size of schools and to high-stakes testing.
I hope you are saying, "WOW, these numbers can't be
true!" I’m afraid they are.
The good news is that in Christian education we have the freedom
to break free from this model that is failing our kids and our country. OCA can be Christ-centered, which allows us to
be student-centered. I’m concerned that
too many of our Christian schools are modeling themselves after this broken
model of public education. Can we call
ourselves Christian schools if that is what we are doing? Are we just another version of a knock-off
Christian Facebook logo t-shirt?
The challenge to remain distinctively different
from our culture while at the same time having the proper degree of relevance
to be effective is not a new challenge for God's people. When Israel was
commissioned to seize their newly acquired Promised Land, God gave them a set of
stipulations to protect them against religious and cultural syncretism. (Syncretism
is the combining of different, often contradictory beliefs, while bending
practices of various philosophies.) Israel would spend the next several
generations slowly integrating pagan culture and practices, and it resulted in
a hybrid worldview. Fast forward 4,000 years, the community of faith is
still challenged with keeping our holy distinctions of identity, mission, and
purpose, while at the same time keeping an effective proximity with our
culture.
I’m excited that at Oklahoma Christian Academy
the Christian part of our name is not just a marketing scheme. Since we are a Christian school we desire to
be distinctively different. We feel
called by God to bring the gospel to our students in relevant ways, creating a
school that re-imagines what education should be.
This year will be filled with new vision and plans for a better
and more intentional education for our students. I’m going to use this blog to help
communicate about the practical ways we plan to reshape the model of education
at OCA. Here is a sneak-peak at a few of
new directions we are headed.
1. Digital Citizenship
2. Project Based Learning
3. Co-teaching and Interdisciplinary Courses
4. Career Shadowing and Apprenticeship Opportunities
5. Strengthening of Science and Technology
6. Enhancing Faith-Formative Experiences on Campus
I hope you’re as excited as I am to tear down the old walls and
begin building a better foundation for our students’ futures. It’s going to be a great year, and I feel privileged
to share it with you.
Stay tuned...
