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Education in the Totality of Knowledge, Culture, and Life

In 1982 Francis Schaeffer delivered a short speech on the nature and purpose of Christian education.  He concluded his remarks by saying:

"True Christian education is not a negative thing; it is not a matter of isolating the student from the full scope of knowledge.  Isolating the student from large sections of human knowledge is not the basis of a Christian education.  Rather it is giving him or her the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator's existence and in the Bible's teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false.  It is not isolating students from human knowledge.  It is teaching them in a framework of the total biblical teaching, beginning with the tremendous central thing, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  It is teaching in this framework, so that on their own level, as they are introduced to all of human knowledge, they are not introduced in the midst of a vacuum, but they are taught each step along the way why what they are hearing is either true or false.  That is true education.

The student, then, is an educated person . . . who will have the tools to keep learning.  Is life dull?  How can it be dull?  No, a true education, a Christian education, is . . . giving the tools to open the doors to all human knowledge within the Christian framework so students . . . can keep learning as long as they live, and enjoy, really enjoy, the whole wrestling through field after field of knowledge.  That is what an educated person is.

In short, Christian education  should produce students more educated in the totality of knowledge, culture, and life than non-Christian education rooted in a false view of truth.  Christian education should end with a better-educated boy and girl and man and woman than the false could ever produce.  Protecting the Christian school must carry with it more than the negative; it should produce a superior education in all areas of human knowledge."