OF DISSONANT RHAPSODY AND HARMONIC FUGUE: THE ROLE OF METAPHOR IN THE INTERPLAY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE IN EDUCATION + HARRO VAN BRUMMELEN + Chair of the Education Division Trinity Western University Much of our thinking takes place in terms of metaphor. Expressions like "fall upon the thorns of life," "life is a desert," "the game of life," and "the bread of life" all evoke certain images, and these images in turn reflect aspects of a particular worldview, sometimes half in jest, often very seriously. Our ordinary language is replete with metaphor. When we consider phenomena in terms of specific metaphors, including educational ones, they shape how we think about the issues involved. They determine a framework within which we deliberate and act, despite the fact that almost all metaphors break down when pushed too far. Metaphors are common in the field (or journey?) of education. A recent government document exhorted educators to cultivate our students' minds.1 We agree to disagree about whether teaching is an art or a science. Students have been viewed as tabula rasa or unfolding plants, as objects or subjects. A recent book title asked whether curriculum is product or praxis.2 Schools and colleges serve as legitimate gatekeepers for further life experiences, or are looked at as instruments of domination and exploitation. Metaphors can be potent or impotent. They can by 1 "yummy" like integration (when, for instance, it refers to the integration of faith and learning in Christian colleges). On the other hand, they can be "yucky" like indoctrination (even though it is doubtful that education can take place without the teaching of some fundamental, "self-evident" truths that are not fully examined, especially with younger students). Metaphors can remain with us for centuries or fade after a few years. The point here is that metaphors affect our attitudes, our beliefs, our ways to approach and resolve issues, and our daily educational practices. Consequently, we need to work with ones that reflect our beliefs and our aims, also in teaching and learning at various levels. Most educational metaphors are rooted in or imply a concept of human beings and their world. Neil Postman, for instance, shifted his thinking about teaching from it being a subversive to a conserving activity between 1970 and 1980. This reflected a change in the way he viewed society as well as in the way society viewed itself, for Postman is a master at playing the fiddle of current societal concerns. We cannot avoid metaphors; they are so much part of our language and thinking that we have more difficulty identifying than avoiding them. The question for Christian educators therefore becomes which key metaphors we use when we think about teaching and learning and how they influence us. Which metaphors do we and should we prefer and why? How do these metaphors affect the interplay of theory and 2 practice in educational institutions that claim to be Christian? In this article, I consider metaphors for some of the commonplaces in education: the nature of teaching, how we view the learner, and the curriculum we teach. Finally, I discuss a metaphor for viewing all of education, relating it to some recent writings about the place of religion in education. Throughout, I consider the implications for Christian approaches to teaching and learning, at the college as well as at the school level. Teaching as a Religious Craft3 North American educators often think of teaching as a science. Direct instruction and mastery learning, for instance, show us how to learn rather narrow concepts and skills quickly and painlessly. Step-by-step teaching methods can be useful for mastering specific background information, algorithms, and routines. Ultimately, however, viewing teaching as a science fails. Recent research casts doubt on the long-term efficacy of teaching techniques based on specific models that aim at efficiency, for instance.4 One reason is that if teaching is viewed purely as a scientifically based methodology, it does not allow instructors or students to function as full, responsible image of God. Rather, it treats them as sacrifices on the altar of technological efficiency. Behavioral objectives and related technological teaching practices contribute to the pointless, harried hurriedness of today's society. 3 Mastery and productivity replace thoughtfulness and care. Such a framework prevents teaching from being a living encounter with other humans. Worse, teaching as a science mocks Romans 12. It also inevitably conforms children to predetermined patterns of this world, rather than transforming them by the renewing of their minds. In reaction, some educators have swung to the teaching as an art metaphor.5 This metaphor includes an emphasis on creativity in pedagogy and student activities. Lessons are staged using drams and surprise. Instructors are actors; classrooms, theaters; students, creative responders. The attractiveness of this alternative is understandable, also for Christians. Enacting our belief that students are images of God should lead us to give them many creative opportunities for personal response, something Christians have often neglected at all levels of education. In kindergarten children want to explore, push out their horizons, experiment with what they are learning. However, when I give sophomore college students open-ended assignments where they need to make their own decisions and individual responses, they often are uptight and insecure; they have learned just to regurgitate and reorganize predigested information. Practicing teaching as an art is more likely to help students capture a crucial but oft-lacking dimension of learning. Yet, teaching as an art also falls short as a metaphor. The message is more than the medium. If this were not so, 4 notables like the apostle Paul or John Dewey would never have become influential. In the end, style without substance is an empty shell. Teaching needs meaningful content as well as aesthetic style. I believe, therefore, that a metaphor with more potential for Christian educators is that of teaching as a religious craft, borrowed in part from Alan Tom's conception of teaching as a moral craft.6 First, teaching is a craft. Craftsman teachers, as Tom has said, are diligent, skillful, and perceptive. They reflect constantly on how their classroom presence affects learning. They hone tried-and-true approaches and develop others as the need arises. Craftsman instructors, even when experienced, deliberately and consistently evaluate their teaching, keeping abreast of new methods that fit their philosophical framework, personal characteristics, and needs of their students. At the college level, they also enrich their teaching with new insights based on their own reading, research and reflection. No two craftsmen will go about their craft in identical ways. Craftsman potters do not need to put their signature on their artifacts for others to recognize their distinctness. Their unique products depend on their raw material, their expert knowledge, their skills, and their creativity. Similarly, no two craftsman instructors will teach will teach in exactly the same way, but all have a keen perception of their students' pedagogical needs, effective interpersonal group skills, and dispositions to 5 try something new and creative from time to time. Calling teaching a craft, however, is not enough. Teaching does not just involve molding or making objects. Rather, it leads students in certain directions, enabling them to take on their life's calling. It develops their abilities, insights and dispositions within the contours of certain cultural norms and values. Teaching is a religious activity in the broad sense of that term in that it guides students-implicitly or explicitly-on the basis of the instructor's deepest convictions of the cause, nature and purpose of life. As such, Christian instructors are called to delineate and model a Christian worldview in their classrooms. They choose conceptual knowledge, teach process skills and provide problem-solving and creative experiences not as ends in themselves, but to enable students to experience the potential and meaning of life as Christians in contemporary society. They help students develop attitudes and dispositions on the basis of biblical principles, encouraging them to commit themselves and their way of life to God. They model responsible and authentic Christian scholarship within the framework of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). They do not neglect to use scientific structuring nor artistry in their teaching where appropriate, but always do so reflectively, keeping in mind their goal to enable students to become persons of integrity and responsible discipleship, also in their academic 6 endeavors. Four years ago I had the privilege of returning to the classroom after a nine-year administrative hiatus. It was at the college level, a different level than my previous teaching. In some ways, college teaching seemed easy: concerns with classroom management were minimal. But in other ways, it was difficult. How did I help students respond in personally meaningful ways when I faced a group of thirty or sixty students only twice a week for one semester? I asked myself particularly in what ways I could encourage critical thinking. Too often my students fell into the pattern of parroting the information and views I taught. I wanted my students to think through societal issues, to be renewed by the transforming of their minds, to reject aspects of the "pattern of this world," even those that may traditionally have been accepted by Christian college supporters. Craftsman teachers search for ways in which students can grasp eternal biblical guidelines and norms but apply these to everyday situations in fresh, thoughtful ways. My teaching is continuing to change. I do far less lecturing now than in my first semester, and focus more on discussion and debate on the basis of readings. As much as possible, I have shifted the responsibility to the students through small group work, discussions of assignments and issues, student presentations, and so on. At the same time, I spend more time outside of class with individual and small 7 groups of students, giving them help and direction for their in-class work. Looking at teaching as a constantly honed religious craft has proven time consuming but rewarding. As students take on responsibility for their own learning, they implement and execute cooperative learning methods in my classes. I try to design assignments that will be meaningful for them. I have therefore moved away from the standard research paper in a number of courses. Instead, students in my education courses do more but shorter assignments: oral presentations on issues related to the course, thoughtful critiques of readings, developing justifications of their own viewpoints, writing teacher resource units (often later included in unit resource banks for practicing teachers), preparing reactions to case studies, an so on. Perhaps some of these things are more easily done in professional teacher education courses than in some other disciplines. Certainly education departments need to model what they preach! However, all instructors who look at teaching as a religious craft will consider better classroom approaches, and adopt the ones that fit their goals as well as their particular situation. Research shows that the traditional lecture, while it has its place, needs to be supplemented with other approaches. Craftsman teachers will continue to reflect on their teaching. While they don't just copy how others teach, they look out for ways to improve their teaching in line with their overall 8 philosophical framework. Learners as Responsible Image of God I turn now to metaphors of the learner. During the past three hundred years four main metaphors have been used to describe learners in education: trainable objects, blank slates, unfolding plants, and primary agents of social change. I shall argue that considering learners as responsible images of God is a richer metaphor that leads to more meaningful classroom learning situations. Behaviorists look at children as trainable objects to be conditioned into desirable responses. For Skinner, even the need for moral struggle and making moral choices disappears, since we can condition people to be "naturally wise and good," and make automatic "right" responses. We can therefore abandon, Skinner continues, notions like justice, freedom, self-control, and personal responsibility.7 Skinner's deterministic, mechanistic view excludes a full view of personhood. It does not recognize that students have an inner selfhood, a core, a heart that cannot be manipulated. Students are accountable for how that "heart commitment" governs their lives, even though their environment may manipulate many aspects of their thinking and behavior. Skinner falls to recognize the religious core of human beings (theistic or otherwise), and rejects concepts such as sin and grace and their impact on teaching-learning situations. That is not to say that teachers sometimes do not need 9 to use Skinnerian techniques. This occurs, however, in abnormal situations, when students because of sin or circumstance do not function responsibly. Moreover, behavioristic techniques should even then be used to steer students away from the need for external control, to enable them to work towards functioning as well-balanced, self-responsible persons. Regrettably, advocates of such classroom approaches as Rosenshine's direct teaching or Hunter's Instructional Theory into Practice (ITIP)-not to speak of Accelerated Christian Education (ACE)-still believe behaviorist methodology should be a major pedagogical focus in the classroom, contrary analysis and research notwithstanding. At the college level, too, if we treat students as responsible beings and structure our dealings with them to encourage responsibility, the vast majority will act responsibly, and we can deal with the others on an individual basis. Christian educators have, I suspect, been guilty more often of treating learners as John Locke's tabula rasa or as Freire's banks that passively receive teachers' deposits of information. Learning needs a factual and conceptual base. If the learner is viewed as a passive receptacle, however, then the students' personal traits, abilities, and beliefs are neglected ad remain undeveloped. Nick Wolterstorff, for one, has said a great deal about the dangers of an intellectual knowledge of God, His creation and His Kingdom that is not accompanied by loving service and personal 10 responsibility. The preponderance of multiple choice questions on first- and second-year examinations, most at a relatively low cognitive level, underscores that many college-level instructors make de facto use of this metaphor. Pestalozzi and modern cognitive psychologists such as Piaget and Kohlberg have viewed learners as unfolding plants. A red tulip is a red tulip, and you cannot change its characteristics, even though by watering and weeding you can help it become stronger and healthier. This metaphor led Kohlberg, for instance, to posit that there are invariant stages of moral reasoning through which children move, and to encourage them to move to the highest phase. We now know the shortcomings of this model. It is exclusively emphasizes rationality at the expense of other dimension of human life and learning ("cultivation of the mind"). It artificially forces data into classification schemes in order to make stages seem universally progressive. Further, both Piaget and Kohlberg lacked insight into the existence and effects of sin and grace and conversion. Nor did Kohlberg address the common problem that rational conclusions about moral dilemmas and actual behavior may conflict. While the unfolding plant metaphor recognizes that students are wholistic, thinking beings who ought not to be manipulated in a behavioristic manner, it falls short of the biblical concept of image bearers who are called to make responsible decisions and act on them, with 11 not only the rational but also the religious, moral, social, aesthetic, economic, and emotional aspects of life being involved. Fourthly, John Dewey and today's critical theorists look at learners as primary agents of social change, as potentially autonomous liberators of society. They emphasize problem solving and critical thinking in order to transform culture. According to Dewey, using the scientific method to determine consequences of actions would lead to operational truth and values. In this way, students themselves may change society for the better: there is not need for repentance nor for predetermined ethical standards. Change, it is assumed in the Western liberal tradition, leads to positive progress. The recently proposed new government school curriculum in British Columbia uses this approach to reduce morality to "social responsibility" and to posit the belief that through the development and application of cognitive skills students can become independent and bring about a "healthy" society.8 Paul urged us, of course, to be transformed through the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1,2). That, taken together with the injunctions of the Old Testament prophets, does imply that as instructors we must prepare students "to act justly and love mercy." But the starting point for that is that we "walk humbly with [our] God" (Micah 6:8), not that we act as autonomous agents of change who determine values on the basis of pragmatic, utilitarian investigation. 12 Servanthood, not self-liberation, characterizes the Christian life. All of these metaphors for learners contain kernels of truth. Educational thinkers who posit and work with them observe God-created reality and discover certain aspects of truth. All the metaphors, at the same time, fall short of the mark. Instead, we need to work explicitly with the metaphor of learners as responsible images of God. This paper is not intended to give an in-depth exegesis of this biblical concept. Rather, I just point out three implications of the metaphor for education. First, we know that students as well as their instructors have a religious heart and that their fellowship with God determines their relations with their fellow humans, with themselves, with all of God's creation, and with their attitude towards learning. Therefore as religious craftsmen, instructors need to be concerned about and nurture their student's faith-obedience. Second, students are responsible beings. That is, God calls them to be diligent learners but also response-able ones, able and willing to respond personally to what is taught. Instructors must enable students to exercise such response-ability in learning. My wife has her kindergartners, for instance, choose and keep track of their own learning center activities with minimal rules. She helps them evaluate their own work, consistently holds them to their commitments, and leads them to disciplining 13 themselves. She makes this work by requiring her children solve their own problems as much as possible and reinforcing the positive. At the college level, we may do no less and can do a great deal more. Third, God holds teachers and learners accountable for the use of their many-faceted, God-given abilities. Since humans are all unique, instructors must structure classrooms to take into account diverse learning styles and allow for what I have elsewhere called "transcendence," i.e., encourage and press students to go beyond what is taught in class.9 They must respond personally, uniquely; we need, as Arthur Holmes has put it, more "nerds" who are willing to take ideas and run with them in their thinking, in discussions, in the library, in the labs. Rather than helping students grow in the grace and knowledge that God has given them, all too often we banish them from what God intended by treating them as manipulable objects, or as unfolding plants on whom we have little influence, or as potentially autonomous agents of social change, or, perhaps most often, as passive receptacles of the knowledge we imbue. None of these metaphors capture the full impact of students as responsible images of God. Sin may darken the imaging of our students and of ourselves to the point where we have great difficulty seeing God's image when we look into the mirror of our souls or those of our students. But ultimately being images of God is not an option: we are created that way. Treating each other as 14 images of God called to responsible faith-obedience sets the stage for meaningful learning. Curriculum as Product, Practice, Praxis, and Pilgrimage Since the efficiency movement of the progressive era in the early 1900s, the metaphor dominating curriculum and curriculum development has been the production metaphor. The scientific, linear Tyler rationale [purposes è learning experiences è organization of experiences è evaluation] has, by and large, put central value questions off to one side, confused means and ends with an undue emphasis on behavioral objectives, and left little room for what Eisner has called expressive activities. The product metaphor implies that instructors will control student learning so that, at the end of the teaching process, students behave in accordance with predetermined performance objectives. These objectives, on the whole, focus on narrow bits and pieces of "knowledge-that" and "knowledge-how," with knowledge being objective, neutral, value-free, measurable, and impersonal. It is assumed that all the bits and pieces of positivistic knowledge will eventually lead to a unified, meaningful whole. Instructors therefore become managers rather than pedagogues. If this metaphor is used consistently (it seldom is: how many instructors actually use behavior objectives on a day-today basis?), education becomes the relentless, efficient pursuit 15 of gaining information and skills. Yet stated objectives can never encompass all of our intents, and instructors need to cope with ambiguity, capture the "teachable moment," and be responsive to perceived needs and personal interactions. Nevertheless, the production metaphor still dominates curriculum work in state and provincial departments of education and, at the college level, in courses in disciplines such as psychology. "The curriculum field is moribund," Joseph Schwab proclaimed in the early 1970s, assigning the blame to an interest in control rather than understanding the complex actions, reactions and transactions in designing morally, socially, and intellectually justifiable programs and courses. Schwab believed continual two-way traffic should bridge theory and practice. He called this, in Aristotelian fashion, "the practical arts ," emphasizing deliberation involving theorists, instructors and students who interact and thus chart and guide practice.10 This "curriculum as practice" metaphor deals with knowledge in a more holistic sense than the production metaphor. It is motivated not by the question "What can we do?" but by "What ought we to do?" "How can the curriculum encourage moral and just action?" Curriculum content is chosen not just for cognitive accretion, but to encourage historical-hermeneutic knowledge, i.e., knowledge that promotes reflection, interpretation and discernment that takes into account the historical and cultural presuppositions and contexts. 16 Curriculum cannot be just a product, Schwab holds, since it must be concerned about the interaction between instructors and learners in specific situations. Curriculum changes and takes on meaning as it is practiced and experienced. Curriculum is practice, providing a basis for everyday living.11 I have found this metaphor helpful although it is oft misunderstood and also minimizes the impact of value conflicts. At the college level we need deliberative curriculum activity, if just to break through the drab, deadening monotony, for instance of textbooks (and resulting courses) ranging from introductory psychology to college algebra. Instructors need to deliberate with their students about course structure and content that can lead to understanding, give particular instructor and student characteristics, resource materials, institutional requirements, and group dynamics. Departments and faculties also need to use deliberative processes as they design overall curriculum programs; too often this occurs on an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion. At the same time, Schwab downplays the fact that the theoretical underpinnings of curriculum are rooted in what Wolterstorff calls control beliefs, that the "ought to do" related to worldview-based convictions. He never considers how to deal with basic value differences that torpedo many curriculum projects. Nevertheless, if our curriculum framework does take proper account of our philosophical underpinnings, I believe the metaphor of 17 curriculum as practice has much potential. It has led, for instance, to a course such as a mandatory senior interdisciplinary course on our campus, "Contours of a Christian Worldview." Among critical theorists curriculum as praxis has become a dominant metaphor. It views curriculum as reflective, constantly evolving classroom practice leading to personal emancipation and social reconstruction. Curriculum gives students meaning by helping them reconstruct their social reality and the political contradictions in which they live. Learners must transform their consciousness of life in society, actively participating in educational decisions through a problem-posing curriculum. Curriculum is not just a set of plans; it has no pre-set objectives. Rather, it comes about as learning takes place through interactive planning, acting and evaluating involving both instructors and learners. Ultimately, as Shirley Grundy puts it, "the student is the final authority regarding the authenticity of the knowledge; not the teacher, not the textbook."12 There are no externally imposed norms except that students must construct their own knowledge so that it liberates them. This metaphor correctly weds reflection and action and leads us to ask deeper questions about the effects of schooling (e.g., the hidden curriculum) and the superficiality of looking at curriculum as a product. Nevertheless, the connotations of the metaphor-its political bias, its 18 assumption that neither inherently meaningful knowledge nor absolute standards exist, and its view that humans can liberate themselves-mean that Christian educators cannot use it with profit. Robert Pazmino recently proposed yet another metaphor: curriculum as pilgrimage. He believes that this metaphor allows for student learning goals to be "structured in a cooperative or collaborative way which assumes a degree of responsibility on the part of students."13 The pilgrimage or journey metaphor has a great deal to commend itself, and I have used it myself as a metaphor for teaching.14 Perhaps John Dewey was closer to the mark than both Pazmino and myself, however, when he used the metaphor to describe education as a whole. If you define curriculum more narrowly than the school or college experiences of a learner (and I believe we should; otherwise curriculum becomes a superfluous word), then the curriculum is more the tentatively plotted route than the pilgrimage itself. But even the route metaphor falls short, for curriculum is more like an amoebae: it has an overall structure, but changes and needs to adapt itself in flexible ways as it is implemented in particular situations. I am still searching for a completely suitable curriculum metaphor that helps Christian institutions develop and implement curricula that further their goals effectively. I question whether such institutions can function with the narrow metaphor of curriculum as product 19 and still meet their mission to develop thoughtful Christian scholars and leaders. The use of this metaphor, often implicit, when combined with the learner as receptacle view ends up promoting knowledge-that and knowledge-how as ends in themselves rather than as means to well-formulated ends. Yet we cannot accept the curriculum as praxis metaphor either: curriculum becomes self-constructed knowledge that interprets reality within a neo-Marxist framework. Schwab's "the practical," besides being inelegant, is open to misunderstanding, a basic flaw for a metaphor. With respect to curriculum, my search for a suitable metaphor continues. Education as Spiritual Formation Looking at teaching as a science, the learner as a conditioned object, and the curriculum as a product is coming under increasing critical scrutiny and rejection. Indeed, a remarkable phenomena has arisen: there is a renewed interest in the religious in education. I call this remarkable since our society, on the whole, considers itself technological and secular, with religion being relegated to some private corner of our lives. In Canada, only 14% of young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 value religion highly and even fewer say that God has an important influence in their lives. Yet in education the discussion of religion and morality is becoming respectable once again. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development in 1988 released a proposed framework for moral education based on universal truths, and another of its panels called 20 for teaching about religion in the schools. Similarly a California Department of Education report recommended that the curriculum should contain more material dealing with the origin and spread of Christianity, including Bible stories.15 But the religious quest is a deeper one than even such reports imply. John 8:32, "The truth shall make you free," was featured as the initial lead-off quote in the editorial that set the tone for a recent issue of Curriculum Inquiry. It also quoted Deuteronomy 6 in emphasizing "the didactic power of values as a force shaping education."16 George Willis suggests in the same issue that "religion is a way of fully encountering the fundamental mysteries of the universe, not a way of inadequately explaining them rationally . . . To live fully is to live religiously." He explores, as he puts it, "the appropriateness of living curriculum religiously and how that living can be done." Educators have the task to make the presence of the transcendent "Other," the ground of being, manifest to pupils in their quest to become "response-able." He then shows how a recent significant curriculum book, though considered secular, is a profoundly religious one. All of life is religious, he concludes, even though his stance is far removed from evangelical Christianity.17 Similarly, critical theorist David Purpel in 1989 published The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education: A Curriculum for Justice and Compassion in Education. Purpel 21 uses liberation theology and what he calls "creation theology" (i.e., "a theology that rejects emphases on sin an guilt, and instead celebrates joy, creation, and responsibility," and combines New Age teachings with those of Jesus) to define a prophetic voice for education: to contemplate the awe, wonder, and mystery of the universe while striving for harmony, peace, and justice. Basing education on such themes, Purpel continues, can lead to "the roar of high excitement involving enormous possibilities and dangerous risks . . . It is my strong belief that we both need and are capable of creating an overarching belief system." Religion, he has come to believe, is a necessary basis for permanent and positive change in society.18 There are other examples. Wayne Hueber has expressed the necessity of acknowledging the spiritual in education in order to keep alive the flame of openness, love, and hope.19 Maria Harris has developed the thesis that teaching is an activity of religious imagination.20 Parker Palmer pointedly uses the metaphor of education as spiritual formation. We move from objectivism to truth, he says, when we know truthfully, i.e., when "the knower becomes a co-participant in a community of faithful relationships with other persons and creatures and things . . . We find truth by pledging our troth, and knowing becomes a reunion of separated beings whose primary bond is not of logic but of love." In that way, education may become, also at the college level, "space in which obedience to truth is 22 practiced."21 Palmer has identified a key metaphor for Christian educational institutions: education as spiritual formation. It involves teachers being religious craftsmen, students being treated as responsible images of God, and curriculum as a deliberative art that upholds and encourages justice and compassion. It also means that our classrooms become communities of learning where students experience the rich possibilities of living in caring, loving contexts, where students learn to use their abilities for the benefit of others as well as themselves, where they share the joys and difficulties of working unitedly towards common goals as members of Christ's body. At the same time, this metaphor implies that we need to define in more depth what response-able discipleship involves: what is servanthood for students entering the 21st century? Is it still possible for them or for us to fit comfortably into the individualistic, materialistic, hedonistic lifestyle of North America and yet retain our integrity? If not, how can Christian colleges counteract the secularism that has influenced students, parents and instructors without antagonizing our supporters? In what ways can we create space in which students practice obedience to truth in an academic setting? In conclusion, let me explain my title. We often have not recognized the metaphors we have implicitly accepted as undergirding our Christian educational practices. This has 23 resulted in dissonance, discordance, incongruity between theory and practice. Our institutions have been like a rhapsody: a great deal of enthusiasm but with irregular form. Theory and practice have not always meshed. Christian educational institutions at all levels need to become more of a consonant fugue: contrapuntal and interwoven themes of theory and practice that become more and more complex as we develop, but that remain harmonious as we understand and develop the metaphors with which we work. Is it helpful to consider education as the spiritual formation of response-able image bearers in a community of learning, by means of the religious craft of teaching where curriculum is the deliberatively practical? Perhaps there are other, more helpful metaphors. But, at the very least, these provide a starting point for continuing our pilgrimage of theorizing about and practicing Christian approaches to education. Notes and References 1"The school's purpose is to cultivate the mind." A Legacy for Learners: Summary of Findings, Royal Commission on Education (Victoria: Province of British Columbia, 1988), pg. 22. 2Shirley Grundy, Curriculum: Product or Praxis. New York: Falmer, 1987. 3An earlier version of this section aimed more at Christian schools appeared in Christian Educators Journal, 24 December/January 1990), pp. 9-10. 4See, for example, Pam Robbins and Pat Wolfe, "Reflections on a Hunter-Based Staff Development Project," Educational Leadership (February 1987), pp. 56-61. 5Elliot W. Eisner, "The Art and Craft of Teaching," Educational Leadership (January 1983), pp. 2-13; Gilbert Highet, The Art of Teaching (New York: Random House, 1950); and Louis J. Rubin, Artistry in Teaching (New York: Random House, 1985). 6Alan R. Tom, Teaching as a Moral Craft (New York: Longman, 1984). 7B. F. Skinner, "Man," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, (December 1964), pp. 482-85. 8Year 2000: A Curriculum and Assessment Framework for the Future (Victoria: Ministry of Education, 1989 draft), p. 7. 9Harro Van Brummelen, Walking with God in the Classroom: Christian Approaches to Learning and Teaching (Burlington, ON: Welch, 1988), pp. 56-8. 10Joseph J. Schwab, "The Practical: A Language for Curriculum," "The Practical: Arts of Eclectic," "The Practical: Translation into Curriculum," School Review (November 1969), pp. 1-23; August 1971, pp. 493-542; August 1973, pp. 501-22. 11Grundy, pp. 59-78. 12Ibid., p. 126. 13R.W. Pazmino, Foundational Issues in Christian 25 Education: An Introduction in Evangelical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1988), p. 213. 14Van Brummelen, pp. 180-2. 15ASCD Panel on Moral Education, "Moral Education in the Life of the School," Educational Leadership (May 1988), p. 5-7; ASCD Panel on Religion in the Curriculum, Religion in the Curriculum (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1987); Moral and Civic Education and Teaching About Religion (Sacramento, CA: California State Board of Education, 1988). 16Editorial, Curriculum Inquiry 19:1 (1989), pp. 1, 6. 17George Willis, "The Corpus and the Incorporeal of Curriculum," Curriculum Inquiry 19:1 (1989), pp. 71-7. 18David E. Purpel, The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education (Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1989), pp. ix, x. 19Dwayne E. Huebner, "Spirituality and Knowing," in Learning and Teaching the Ways of Knowing, Eighty-fourth Yearbook, Part II (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 1985). 20Maria Harris, Teaching and Religious Imagination (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987). 21Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 31, 88. 26