The "Real World": Learning, Home, and Refugees

 “How do your students do when they enter the real world?” 

The manner in which the question was asked suggested that at least to some degree, the inquiring family presumed that the learning journey for students at LCES is not linked in a direct way to what happens in the broader world outside of the school day. I firmly believe it does. 

Take for example our student service project this spring. After wrapping up our learning connection with Indwell, our students are being challenged to learn about what “home” means, especially to those who don’t have one. LCES will be learning about refugees throughout the world, but also locally right here in our city as they read through books specifically chosen to help them understand the journey of those who have fled their home. 

Christian education has as its goal not to isolate students from life, but to enable them to fully understand what they are actually seeing around them: God’s amazing world! We seek to have students be able to peel back the confusion and distortion of that good creation caused by sin in order to see creation as it was originally meant to be, and one day what it will become again. The “real world” without the story of the mighty acts of God isn’t real at all, since it tells an incomplete story of what life is really all about. As C.S. Lewis said through one of his characters, we seek to provide students ample opportunity to “…go further in and go further up” as they deepen and widen their understanding of all things. Mixed in between math facts and poetry, gym class and art, Christian education grounds students with the chance to sort through a messy world to find what is real, true, valuable, honorable, faithful, and praiseworthy. 

SJ