Darrow Miller and Friends

The Missing Curriculum

For every teacher looking for better curriculum, here’s an essential point of view.

Our good friend Christian Overman at Worldview Matters is a kindred spirit. He has written a powerful article worthy of your attention. Here’s an excerpt:

In 1721, Jonathan Edwards graduated from the Collegiate School at New Haven, known today as Yale University. But before Edwards and his classmates could exit Yale, whether to work as pastors or merchants, they were all tested in a particular field of study that has since disappeared from virtually every school in America: the practical art of God-centered work. This specific subject has not only disappeared from our schools, but from most of our churches and homes as well. The course of study that Jonathan Edwards and his fellow Puritans completed had a name, a Latin term: technologia. It was a curriculum complete with textbooks. Technologia was not just a course on vocations or aptitudes. It was a holistic curriculum that helped people approach work in the broader context of a Christian worldview. It was the biblical worldview that gave work—all kinds of legitimate work—remarkable purpose and meaning for Jonathan Edwards and his peers, whether they were missionaries, bankers, or homemakers.

Dr. David Scott, professor of history at Southern Evangelical Seminary, discovered the technologia curriculum while doing eight years of PhD research on Jonathan Edwards and the Puritans.

“The Puritan curriculum of technologia,” writes Dr. Scott, “taught Edwards a God-centered view of all reality. He grew up in a church that believed it had an obligation to teach what it meant to live a God-filled life in everything we do. That is why the textbooks of technologia began with the being of God and traced His truth through creation all the way to how it is lived out as a farmer, shoemaker, or merchant.”

But today, there is little formal curricula available that combines an understanding of biblical worldview with a God-centered work life. This is what I call “The Missing Curriculum.”

How many texts are available today that specifically focus on the theology of work, or help students comprehend how the biblical worldview relates to things like repairing automobiles, designing software, or running any legitimate business?

Read the whole thing here.

We’ve posted the article at MondayChurch.org

 

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Dr. Christian Overman is founder and director of Worldview Matters. His blog is often featured at Darrow Miller and Friends. Dr. Overman is a writer, a speaker, a coach, and a Colson Centurion. Worldview Matters exists to help followers of Christ recover from secularized thought, and to make relevant connections between the biblical worldview and everyday life. The agency assists churches, schools and businesses in equipping their members to live out the implications of their faith in harmony with Christ and His Word. Christian and his wife, Kathy, have been married since 1972. They have 4 adult children, and 10 grandchildren.

2 Comments

  1. Jon Davis Jr.

    April 15, 2012 - 12:11 am

    I believe this idea is important and needed in the Body of Christ!

    Amen!

    • admin

      April 16, 2012 - 8:44 am

      Good. Thanks, Jon.

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