Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of Education
The goal of Christian education is to know, love, and emulate the Truth as revealed through Jesus Christ and the Scriptures. The purpose of Christ Covenant School is to honor God by assisting Christian parents in providing a distinctively classical Christian education. Classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty by means of the seven liberal arts. The Christian worldview complements this classical approach by providing the answers to the ultimate questions concerning being, knowledge, morality, and human nature.
The seven liberal arts are the foundational skills of thinking and communicating truth. The literary arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric train students in a developmentally appropriate way to memorize accurately, reason rightly, and communicate persuasively with words. The mathematical arts train students to know, understand, apply, and appreciate the numerical concepts that reflect the purposeful design of God’s creation. Together, the liberal arts walk a student through the necessary steps for applying truth to all areas of their lives. Acquiring these skills liberates the soul from ignorance in order to grow in wisdom and virtue.
Along with the liberal arts, Christ Covenant School emphasizes the history and ideas that have shaped the Western tradition. This “Great Conversation” of Western Culture is passed down from age to age and ought to inform our content. Through examples of the good, true, and beautiful we impress upon the students moral values, behavior, and character. Through didactic, mimetic, and Socratic instruction, this knowledge becomes understanding. Understanding when perceived and experienced in the classroom then forms the habits and appetites of the soul. In all areas, wisdom and virtue become impressed upon the student with a focus on Christ and His revelation of God’s love.
At Christ Covenant School, we work as unto the Lord and are committed to academic excellence and the pursuit of truth as a community of learners. Teachers develop a relationship of tutorial love with students and serve as mentors who model Christ’s love for their students and families. Inherent in this relationship is that teachers will pray for their students and pattern their dealings after the ethic of Scriptures. The students will follow their teacher as their teacher follows Christ. In order to fully form the soul through education, we also recognize the God-given role that parents play as primary educators of their children. A true culture of
learning will engender passionate conversation between students, faculty, and the home. The creation of this culture of conversations is the means by which young people enter into a lifelong interaction with the larger community of learning.
Classical Christian education at Christ Covenant School is therefore the ongoing pursuit of the Truth by a community of learners committed to Christ and His revelation through the Scriptures. We are guided by the wisdom of a rich, historical narrative of Christian civilization. We are dedicated to modeling Christian virtue through our relationships, and we are continually developing habits and character traits that facilitate the lifelong enterprise of acquiring knowledge, understanding, and wisdom through the virtuous power Christ supplies. Thus, our school proclaims Christ as the Logos of God: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We are called to know, love, and follow Him.