Justice for Education; Educating for Justice

Third Quarter 2004

Review: Books of Vision and Passion

"It has been about 150 years since the last revolution in American education, and it seems like a good time for another one," writes Steven Vryhof in Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling (Eerdmans, 2004). Vryhof is not joining the chorus of voices calling for the "reform" of what is known as the public school system. He's urging something more significant. "The litany of suggestions has been heard time and time again: more money, a longer school day, a longer school year, higher standards, better technology, . . . more frequent testing, stiffer penalties for under-performing schools, and so on." All of these proposals come from inside a closed and deformed box, Vryhof implies, and it is the box itself that needs to be reconstructed.

"For a real revolution, the current schooling debate needs more voices and more topics. The voices should include those of non-public schools, including faith-based schools. These schools are not the enemy of the republic; they are perhaps more 'public' than public schools in that they express and represent the aspirations and desired freedoms of their citizen parents." With more voices and more choices of schooling, the debate over education might be able to open up the most important questions that are all too often ignored or avoided today, says Vryhof. "Have the adult-child relationships in our society shriveled to near irrelevance? Have we been torn loose from a grounded sense of morality, a coherent system of values, a legitimate and worthwhile worldview? Have we become so dazzled by the myth of the common school that we cannot see alternatives that might be more equitable and more productive?"

For serious debate over these questions to take place, Vryhof argues, justice must be done to the true diversity of American citizens and their families in the context of our increasingly complex society. And justice, in this case, demands a new system of public pluralism for diverse schooling options. One of the primary structural impediments to educational pluralism, says Vryhof, is "the public school monopoly established in the nineteenth century in order to 'free' students from the restrictions of their ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. While Horace Mann's system was perhaps needed at the time to bring some uniformity and standards to an educational system ill prepared to take on the Industrial Revolution, the system now makes it difficult to achieve communities of meaning. The monopoly has become one of several social forces that prevent establishment of the community norms and networks that best nourish memory and vision."

Most of Vryhof's book is dedicated to an examination of the achievements and potential of several Protestant schools, showing how important their contribution is not only to their students but also to American society.

Very much in sympathy with Vryhof's book is another new one from Eerdmans (2004) by Nicholas Wolterstorff: Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education, edited by Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks. While Wolterstorff's essays of two decades focus on higher education rather than K-12 schooling, his passion for Christian visionary education is the same. In his case, the accent is on educating for justice—helping to form students who will be oriented toward changing the world. Colleges must offer students "alternative ways of thinking and guide them into, and energize them toward, alternative ways of living," writes Wolterstorff. "We must combat and counteract the 'oblivion of the normative' which ... is becoming characteristic of our society." Educators must "teach for justice—not only on our local scene but on a global scale. Justice, in the biblical sense, occurs when the little ones are not only protected against oppression but also have a voice in the community. Our common humanity would call for us to care about justice in distant societies; the fact that we live in a world-system, with our own area at its core, makes that imperative."

For the most part these two books are not focused on public policy and the legal debates over schooling. They concentrate on education itself and the forming of students with vision and passion for service in God's world, a service that is deeply rooted in memory and an understanding of history. But these are the very books that policy makers should be reading, because there are powerful educational voices in American society that are ignored when public debate is confined to issues involving only government-run schools. These books make the case for pluralism as a matter of justice.

Steven C. Vryhof is the author of earlier books on education and is an adjunct professor of education at Calvin College. Nicholas Wolterstorff is the author of many books on education, philosophy, and the arts. He is professor emeritus at Yale Divinity School and a former professor of philosophy at Calvin College.