12 Who Are Christian Education Students?

Few things moved Jillianne’s heart as quickly and surely as seeing how kindly and tenderly her young child’s Christian school classmates treated her child. The first time that Jillianne brought her child to class late, the other little children calling out her child’s name in gleeful greeting nearly brought Jillianne to tears. When Jillianne soon after picked her child up early from class for an especially challenging doctor’s appointment, the earnest goodbyes and hugs of reassurance her child received from the other little children again made Jillianne’s heart well up within her. Jillianne could see everywhere the influence of Christ’s gorgeous Spirit on the hearts of her child’s precious classmates.

Students

While teachers make or break a school’s academic program, for their part students can make or break a school’s spirit. The social and emotional development that occurs in childhood depend most heavily on the quality of the family relationships in the home environment. The quality of the peer relationships in school come next in their influence on how secure and stable your child’s social and emotional development is. Earnest, kind, and dedicated students rallying around one another in their studies, while supporting one another through their challenges and development, are a special thing to behold. If you’ve seen it in your child’s school, then you know that few things are more precious and important to your child’s sound development. The influence and relationships of a heartening student population can set your child up for a favorable future. Students make lifelong friends as early as kindergarten. They also meet and grow attached to future spouses as early as middle school or high school. Value your child’s Christian school student population. It matters.

Faith

Christian school students aren’t perfect. No one but Jesus is. Yet Christian school students are Christian. And according to the scriptures and the witness of many Christian school parents, the Spirit of Christ in Christian school children can make for an especially sound student body. The scriptures remind us that Christ’s Spirit fosters love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Those fruits expressed in your child’s classmates make Christian school a stable and secure environment to which to devote your child’s social and emotional development. Children raised in Christian environments can prosper like hearty seeds planted in the richest soil. Do the research, but also believe what the scriptures say. Christian children flourish in character, wisdom, and favor both with God and in their social relations. Children raised in Christian environments are on the whole happier, more willing to forgive, and more likely to serve. Christian children also generally show better academic outcomes, in large part because of their greater conscientiousness in studies and cooperation with teachers and classmates. If you want those cooperative and conscientious peer influences for your child, then maintain your child’s enrollment in Christian school.

Friends

Children form fast friendships in K-12 school programs. Parents quickly realize the value to their child of those formative friendships. How your child’s school friends treat your child, whether with kindness or cruelty, or with respect or disregard, means a lot to your child. The quality of friend relationships affect child development at every age and stage. Your child needs stable, supportive, and close friend relationships to develop empathy, confidence, and resilience. Poor friend relationships, marked by conflict, fractures, and unreliability, can isolate your child, lead to withdrawal and depression, and delay social and emotional development. Parents rightly monitor the quality of their children’s friend relationships to ensure their appropriateness and adequacy, and that they meet their children’s developmental needs. Christian school teachers, aides, and volunteers likewise monitor and ensure the quality and appropriateness of school friend relationships, against the highest Christian standards. Entrust your child’s social and emotional development to Christian school friend relationships.

Families

The qualities of Christian school families affect the character and behavior of Christian school students. Christian school students aspire to high character and behavioral standards because of their family character and commitments. Again, not every Christian school student is perfect. Indeed, no students are. But the Christian faith that parents show by enrolling their children in Christian schools positively influences their children’s character and behavior. Public school families can also have strong Christian commitments. They can also demonstrate those Christian commitments in a variety of healthy and beneficial ways. Yet public school families haven’t demonstrated the high level of their Christian commitment by enrolling their children in private Christian K-12 schools, while paying the necessary tuition. Christian school enrollment doesn’t automatically make Christian school students any better. But that enrollment does show Christian school students that their parents have the highest standards for them. Christian families make Christian students. Appreciate the demonstrated, deep, and consistent Christian commitment of Christian school families, as it affects student character.

Socioeconomics

The commitment of Christian school families to their child’s faithful conduct, sound character development, and earnest academics is the greater influence on Christian school students. But socioeconomic status can also correlate to different behavioral patterns and academic outcomes. Your child’s Christian school classmates may in part exhibit more conscientious behavior and greater commitment to academic studies in relation to their generally higher socioeconomic status. Christian schools make enormous tuition-adjustment, fundraising, and scholarship commitments to ensure the access of low-income families to Christian education. You don’t have to be rich or even middle income to send your children to Christian school. Christian schools can and do have wide diversity in socioeconomic status as well as other demographics, among their students and families. Christian schools also show the capacity to bring the generally lower academic outcomes of the children of low-income families up to the schools’ higher academic outcomes. Yet private school tuition costs still tend to tilt Christian school enrollment toward middle- and higher-income families, generally correlated with better academic outcomes and behavioral standards. Many of the students at your child’s Christian school may have socioeconomic advantages over the students of schools where the parents are not paying tuition.

Academics

The Christian faith, private-school commitment, socioeconomic status, and other attributes of Christian school families can also influence the academic commitment and success of Christian school students. As already suggested above, your child’s Christian school classmates may have greater conscientiousness in general, whether as to their behavior, language, dress, demeanor, or other attributes. That conscientiousness naturally extends to their academics. In some schools, students diligent about their studies are the exception rather than the rule. In Christian schools, students lax about their studies would much more likely be the rare exception rather than the rule. You should thus expect your child to have positive peer influences and substantial peer support for your child’s own diligent studies. Your child should readily find skilled and earnest study partners for in-class paired and group work, in study halls, and before and after school. Appreciate the overtly academic student culture of your child’s Christian school.

Attitudes

You should also come to appreciate the Christian attitude of your child’s Christian school classmates. The attitude of a child toward others and toward the child’s own self can have a substantial influence on the child’s social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual development, as well as on the child’s academics. Christian faith teaches the best possible attitude for a child’s growth and development. Christian faith urges striving, responsibility, resiliency, and respect. Christian faith also urges generosity, forgiveness, humility, poise, and grace. Students need these attitudes, among other attitudes that Christian faith fosters, for their fullest development. Bad attitude promotes careless, disinterested behavior, which then delays development. The faith commitment of Christian school students reflects itself in their better attitudes for their own development and academic success. Expect your child to have the positive influence of good attitudes among your child’s Christian school student peers.

Aspirations

You should also come to appreciate the aspirations and ambitions of your child’s Christian school classmates. Christian school parents routinely have high expectations for their children. After all, the parents have committed their children to a private Christian school education, by choice and at tuition cost. The Christian faith of those parents itself demonstrates their high hopes for their children’s flourishing. Children pick up on their parents’ hopes and ambitions for them. Christian school teachers also have high expectations and strong faith in the futures of their school’s Christian students. Students pick up on their teachers’ ambitions for them, much as they do on their parents’ ambitions. Christian school students also draw aspirations and ambitions from their faith. They know that prosperity, hope, flourishing, and a future are God’s scriptural blessing and plan for them. Your child is likely to draw the same hope from your child’s own faith, while adopting the similar aspirations and ambitions of student peers. Appreciate that your child will learn in a sea of student hope, ambition, and aspirations, at your child’s Christian school.

Behaviors

As already suggested above, you have every reason to expect that student behavior will be better at your child’s Christian school. The stronger self-discipline and greater integrity and accountability that private Christian school students show on the whole, proves itself in lower Christian school rates of student interpersonal violence, drug use, gang activity, weapons possession, bullying, sexual assault, insubordination, property theft or damage, and disruption of school operations, among other significant measures. The generally smaller class sizes, greater focus on moral character development, and greater parent involvement in Christian schools further positively influences student behavior. You should thus expect your child to be surrounded in your child’s Christian school by students who routinely and reliably exhibit civil and courteous behavior, conducive to academic studies. You should also expect your child’s Christian school teachers and administrators to respond promptly and effectively to any concerns over disruptive student behavior interfering with your child’s education or development. The parent community of Christian schools can also be an effective monitor of, and positive influence on, student behavior.

Disabilities

Some Christian school students exhibit disabilities, just like students in the public schools. Private Christian K-12 schools generally follow federal and state disability rights laws, whether those laws expressly apply to private religious schools or not. Christian schools may, for instance, identify students suspected of having a qualifying educational disability, with parent consent refer that student for psychological or other appropriate testing, accept the testing results, and with parent involvement put in place an individualized education plan. Christian schools routinely provide access and support for students in wheelchairs and with hearing, vision, and learning disabilities, among other disabilities. Christian schools may not, though, qualify for the full federal special education and student disabilities funding for which the public schools qualify. Instead, Christian schools may have legal rights and access to public school district disability services, including testing and various services, as already mentioned in a chapter above. Because Christian schools do not generally qualify for funding for classroom aides and other individual services and support for severely emotionally and behaviorally disabled students, your child’s Christian school may have fewer or none of those students in attendance.

Development

The greatest overall distinction of Christian schools as to their student population, though, may be in their own commitment to their full development. Christian faith relieves students of the worst of their oppressions, which for any human are spiritual oppressions more so than material, circumstantial, or situational conditions. Christian school students have, through their faith commitments, relieved themselves of the burden of guilt, fear of death, and insecurity of provision. Christian school students are thus free to hope, plan, and strive for their best future. Your child should find in Christian school the positive influence of students who daily strive to achieve their own plans, dreams, and ambitions, not only in the near and long term but also eternally. That influence should help your child receive dreams and discern desires for your child’s own best future. Nothing should hearten you more than seeing your child grasp and pursue the eternal fruits of Christian faith.

Reflection

What was your school experience of the influence and culture of the student body? What have you discerned about the influence, behavior, and culture of the students at your child’s current school? How significant do you regard the quality of your child’s interactions with and influence by other students? Does your child currently benefit from strong and stable school friend relationships? Do you want your child to attend school with children from other sound and stable families? Do the families at your child’s current school have high expectations and positive aspirations for their children? What are your hopes and dreams for your child? What hopes and dreams does your child currently exhibit? Does your Christian faith influence your hopes and dreams for yourself and for your child? Does your child have a disability that requires school accommodations and services? Do you see in your child an eagerness to fully develop your child’s own capacities, expecting to flourish in life?

Key Points

The character, conduct, and hopes of students make or break a school.
The faith of Christian school students makes for a fruitful school spirit.
Your child’s Christian school friends should make strong relationships.
Christian school families make positive student conduct and character.
Christian school students generally share socioeconomic advantages.
Christian school families set high expectations for student academics.
Strong faith gives Christian school students the best learning attitudes.
Christian school students share positive ambitions and aspirations.
Christian school students aspire to the highest behavioral standards.
Christian schools serve disabled students, within funding limits.
Christian schools students desire their own fullest development.

Read Chapter 13.