Reading 3 : Stuart Fowler - schooling for the service of love

Educator B.V. Hill has suggested “teaching as reconciliation” as a way to approach the question of teaching Christianly.
- child in relation to society
- education of thinking and feeling
- educational decision making
The key issue standing in the way of reconciliation in schooling is the dominant value that is given to autonomous human mastery in contemporary schooling. Unless we address this issue anything else we do will be no more than a token gesture.

The secular values of mastery
The knowledge that is most valued in schooling is the knowledge that facilitate this autonomous mastery.
Knowledge as power for mastery is the priority value in schooling because mastery is the priority value in life.
They are admired because they symbolise that most important of human values in this world, the power of human mastery.
The idea of mastery in the value system of the modern secular world is an idolatrous distortion of the biblical calling to rule and subdue the earth. The biblical calling is a calling to a rule over creation in the service of love. The chief end of human life is loving God with all we are and have and our neighbour as ourselves.
In the biblical calling power is a trust to be exercised on behalf of another. This means that the power is used rightly only as it is used to advance the interests of love as revealed by the God who is love.
In the biblical calling all exercise of power is valued only as it serves the ends of love.
The idolatrous secular idea of mastery all too often prevents us from living out the words of Jesus;
we overlook the simple fact that “mastery” is the equivalent of “lordship”.
The dominance of the idea of mastery as an educational and life goal stands in the way of reconciliation because it represents life as a contest, a battle, to be won.
I may have the most sincere desire for reconciliation but if the manner of my living is governed by a motivating principle that generates alienation (mastery/lordship) it will remain a frustrated desire.
Abandoning mastery as a (ultimate) life value will transform the whole of our educational practice.
We will want to assess how effectively these concepts and skills have been integrated in a wisdom that shows understanding and appreciation leading to responsible action.
By rejecting mastery as a life value we refuse to recognise the power that comes with knowledge as having value in itself, but only as equipment for the service of love.
The practice of competition has been distorted by the idolatrous idea of mastery.
(competition in itself may be neutral)
The healthy ingredient in competition is the kind of rivalry in which the achievements of one spur others on to similar or even greater achievement.
The secular ideal of mastery perverts this good thing by changing the direction of rivalry from the attainment of a common goal to the outdoing of the other person.
A healthy rivalry is not directed towards winning against others who become losers, or also-rans, but towards achieving a common goal together.

Serving God in love
To be human is to shape and control our world.
The goal of human life we understand to be the service of God in love; Matt 20:28, 22:37-38.
Every attempt to exercise mastery that is divorced from this loving service is inevitably distorting in its effects.
What the school can do, and what it is uniquely fitted to do, is provide the knowledge base that will enable is students to develop a fullness of service in love. This will provide its students with invaluable preparation for life, regardless of the spiritual direction they take. It will bear its richest fruit in those students who go on to live their lives in a personal commitment to God by faith in Jesus Christ.
To achieve so; we need to recognise the 3 major goal for schooling;
Learning for understanding
Learning for appreciation
Learning for responsible action