Thank God for School
In the hallway, right outside of my classroom, we have fashioned a large tree out of laminated construction paper. It is our “Thankfulness Tree”, and the elementary students have been invited to attach to it leaves of various colors on which they have written something for which they are most thankful. Their thoughts run the gamut, of course: some are thankful for family, for God, and named friends. Others are more perspicacious, being thankful for clean bath water and food to eat. Still others list soccer and Spider-man, no doubt because these things consume their every waking thought. But many of these students write that they are thankful for their school.
“I’m thankful for my school” is shorthand for all that school represents: a sense of belonging, a structured schedule (which, despite their objections, children actually crave), and the opportunity to wonder at God’s creation. The elementary student spends her day imagining the warmth and coziness of Badger’s house, practicing how to draw flowers, and playing hopscotch. She takes pride in reciting her multiplication tables and relishes the chance to retell the story of Washington’s Delaware crossing. She makes bracelets out of yarn and a cape out of her school sweater. When she writes, “I’m thankful for my school,” these are the memories embedded on that paper leaf.
On the other side of campus, a high school student starts his drudgery by memorizing a new declension of a dead language, then wades through John Milton, holds open his eyelids to the music of Samuel Barber, fails to properly calculate the area under a curve (yet again), and labors on an essay about the Interwar Years before heading off to a 20-minute lunch in which he will try his best to finish a bland ham sandwich. Afterwards, he rushes off to dissect some poor dead animal and then engage in an enervating discussion about the true meaning of Citizen Kane, a movie he hopes never to see again. He goes through all of this while being acutely aware of how the cheap tie around his neck contributes to his dowdy appearance and how his ill-fitting shirt does nothing to warm him in the over-chilled classrooms. Then there is the specter of the coming homework: the reading, the integrals, the study questions, and preparation for the exam looming over next week. He has no time to place a leaf on the “Thankfulness Tree”, let alone consider that his education is something that warrants gratitude.
Of all the great divorces that occur between young childhood and the teenage years, the divergence of educational worldviews is perhaps the most vexing for the teacher. Something insidious happens to our young students, so that the sense of wonder which inhabits the 10-year-old turns into the ambivalence of the 12-year-old, then becomes the cynicism or downright disgust of the 14-year-old. Why is this so? And how can we mitigate it?
The first answer lies not only in what we have made school into, but also in what we have taken away from it. We are fortunate to live in a time when we have democratized education, when nearly anyone with modest means can learn nearly anything. We are unfortunate, however, to live in a time when too many have turned education into a burdensome obligation, a precarious steppingstone that stands between the person and success or happiness. What was once a luxury has now become a requirement, and students are loath to approach requirements with any kind of enthusiasm. This apathy, in turn, launches the student into a terrible spiral in which education is despised because it is obligatory, treated perfunctorily because it is despised, and ultimately rendered ineffective. And no one is thankful for ineffective, useless obligations.
One solution to this problem is to reframe education as something that is indeed a gift, something for which we should be grateful. Gratitude can improve a student’s educational experience and give meaning and fulfilment to learning. A properly grateful attitude can reveal to the student the wonderful and loving gift the yoke of learning truly is.
A properly grateful attitude can reveal to the student the wonderful and loving gift the yoke of learning truly is.
True gratitude reorients our spirit towards God. Merely being “thankful” without any contemplation to whom that thanks should be directed bears no teeth. But true gratitude serves as a constant reminder of who is the Giver of all good things. It is impossible to remain a cynic when one is thanking God for every good thing. This is as true in the teenage classroom as it is in 5 o’clock traffic or the emergency room. It is also difficult to remain anxious when we offer prayers of thanksgiving to God (Philippians 4:6-7).
This reorientation grants us the ability to see God’s design for education. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him always (Westminster Shorter Catechism, emphasis mine). What better way to glorify God than to rest in a grateful attitude towards His ordered creation and how he reveals that order to us? What better way to enjoy Him than to constantly remind ourselves of the divine love represented in what he allows us to discover and know about the world? He owes us nothing (Job 41:11), so all appropriate knowledge is a gift, something we cannot earn or demand from Him. We should be thankful that He grants us this knowledge at all.
Once we come to terms with this reality, we understand that the responsibility to learn is itself not a burden, but also a gift. Indeed, it is a sign of God’s generosity that He would not shroud his creation from us; rather, He allows us to discover a great deal of it and to delight in it. But with this gift comes the responsibility to steward it well. It is tempting here to apply Jesus’ parable of the talents to education (Matthew 25:14-30). God has given us the ability to learn what He would show us. Should we waste that gift?
This stewardship is not easy, but it is holy work. Precious few pleasures today were also part of the unfallen world. My view is that learning happens to be one of them. Before the Fall (and even before Eve), Adam spent his time learning about God’s creation and keeping it (Gen. 2:15, 19-20). God brought before Adam every living creature for him to consider and name. Imagine that spectacular revue! The unchanging, sovereign Creator of the universe still does this today, marching before us the elements of the Periodic Table, the laws of one-point perspective, and even the wisdom locked away in the memories of those who have gone before us. I can imagine God saying, “I have created the sunset so that you may marvel at its beauty. But I also want you to understand light refraction so that you may marvel at the intricacy of that same sunset.”
The student who understands that every piece of appropriate knowledge is a gift from God will not so easily dismiss her scholarly duties. She will embrace learning as part of a sacred role she has to play in God’s kingdom. The more she gives thanks for her education, the more she will value that education.
The student who understands that every piece of appropriate knowledge is a gift from God will not so easily dismiss her scholarly duties.
To this, some might object. It is one thing to say that students ought to be grateful for their education. It is another thing entirely to cultivate that attitude among those students. After all, with exam study, 300-page books, and essays all happening after baseball practice, there simply is no room for gratitude. Students today are inundated with expectations, both academic and extra-curricular. As well-intentioned as it may be, some theoretical admonishment about thanksgiving cannot compete with the realities of 13 or more years of 8-hour days in instruction, especially as the demands grow heavier and heavier with each passing year.
So perhaps some practical suggestions are in order. First, encourage students to thank God regularly and thank Him explicitly for their education. Many teachers have experimented with gratitude journals wherein students write daily. When they devote the first few minutes of class to this kind of activity, the teachers often report better engagement and happier dispositions among the classes as a whole. But these gratitude journals are usually too broad for this particular application. What, exactly, are the students thankful for? Left to his own judgment, the high school student is likely to write all sorts of things that matter deeply to him: winning the game, the end of his mother’s illness, that his crush smiled at him. These are all wonderful things, but for the purposes of educational gratitude, the teacher should focus the student’s energies on his thankfulness for his learning. “Dear God, thank you for giving me a math teacher who is joyfully passionate about the quadratic formula. I don’t understand it and don’t think I will ever use it again, but I thank You that I am not condemned to a lazy classroom lorded over by some morose teacher.” Such a statement may sound quaint, but it can work wonders.
Another tactic is to have students write letters of thanks to teachers who have helped them, inspired them, or even saved them from future heartache through stern discipline. At my school, where kindergartners, 6th graders, and seniors often mingle in the same space, it is easy for students to stay in contact with teachers from their distant past. But even on campuses that are more isolated by grade bands, ask students to write to those teachers, staff, and administrators who persist in their memories for the good they have done.
Yet another idea is to bring thankfulness front and center into the classroom. A music teacher might offer thanks to God for giving J. S. Bach his immense talents and for ordering history so that his music would become well-known. A literature teacher might mention to students that they would not even be able to reject Shakespeare as old-fashioned were it not for their reading skill, a skill that most through history have not possessed. All of these, of course, are subgenres of the greater gratitude: that we live lives of such comfort and liberty that we have time to worry about things like gerunds and isotopes at all.
With proper thanksgiving to God, we can change our students' relationships with their education. We can help them redefine it as a blessed work rather than as a begrudging obligation.
With proper thanksgiving to God, we can change our students’ relationships with their education. We can help them redefine it as a blessed work rather than as a begrudging obligation. And maybe our high schooler will end his day–after having delighted in the glories of God’s creative powers–by offering thanks for the divine gift of a childlike sense of wonder. Perhaps he will find the time and feel the need to put a leaf on the Thankfulness Tree that sincerely says, “I am thankful for my school.”
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