It is often said that one of the keys to the success of a representative government is a well-educated citizenry. What do we mean by a “well-educated citizenry”? According to some educators of my acquaintance, this means that children must learn to see themselves as citizens of the world, not bound to any country, and the constitution as a relic of white male Christian oppression. Only then (they say) can citizens make decisions and elect representatives who will bring social justice to a corrupt nation. To these and other public education agencies, the public schools in our country have an obligation to teach children what to think.

Schools of the Lutheran Schools of America, on the other hand, will follow in a long tradition of teaching children how to think, as well as imparting the unchanging truths of the Christian faith. This tradition can be a challenging enterprise for teachers, because the students are taught to examine everything they are taught. For all its challenges, though, the reward is a group of people who are less subject to demagoguery and better equipped to make important choices in this modern age which continually undermines right and just thinking.

LSA schools specifically structure the curriculum to prepare students to think, through time-tested strategies such as these:

• A sequenced order of instruction in which important facts are imparted early, followed by specific instruction in logic, followed by training in persuasive expression.
• Critical thinking is taught so that students are able to identify the assumptions of particular arguments, as well as the logic (or fallacy) that leads to a conclusion.
• Students learn the dialectic, that is, the method of learning involving questions and answers that distinguishes the important from the unimportant and aids in retention of information and reasoning.
• Students are taught logic as its own subject, and learn to distinguish faulty from valid reasoning.
• Debate and disputation sharpens the students’ ability to express themselves in a compelling and convincing way.

While Lutheran schools have valued such training since Luther himself encouraged it, curriculum design and teacher training have neglected them, so that the goal of LSA is to make them accessible again to our devoted teachers in the Lutheran schools. To do so is to truly prepare young men and women to be the best citizens of this world and in this world to live also as citizens of our Savior’s kingdom, bringing to the world in which we live the gospel that is truly saving. For we do live in this world, as Jesus says,

“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:14-18).

May we send them out truly prepared!

Edward Bryant is pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Lombard, Illinois and the chairman of the Board for Lutheran Schools of America.