We are at a cultural inflection point where some of the drawbacks and shortcomings of public education in our increasingly post-Christian world are becoming more and more apparent. This post is not meant to demonize public education—there are many good and faithful public educators doing excellent work (including my wife!). Rather, it is intended to call attention to some of the distinctives of Providence as a classical, Christian school that make it a unique alternative to other educational options. I want to highlight five of those distinctives that are particularly important in our cultural moment.
Transparency
We want our families to know exactly what is happening in the classroom, because we want to be up-front and clear about the type of education we are offering. Parents are welcome to sit in on particular classes and to meet with teachers and administrators. In fact, every book we read and each class goal is listed in our Providence Academic Guide—a comprehensive look at our curriculum that is publicly available. We believe in what we are teaching our students, and we want our parents to believe in it as well. Beyond that, we want our parents to have confidence that who we are today is who we will be five or ten years from now. Our school’s vision document functions as our anchor—no matter what changes may occur in faculty, administration, or circumstance, that vision is what animates and drives our school.
Parental Involvement
Providence has always understood that the role of educating children belongs first and foremost to their parents. That means that a school like ours functions on delegated authority from parents—we are not an autonomous force working toward our own ends. Rather, we work collaboratively alongside parents in the nurture and shepherding of their children. Instead of sidelining parents, we want to elevate their importance in the life of the school. In fact, we are so committed to parental involvement that we require Providence families to give fifty hours of service to the school each year: bringing their own unique skills and gifts to the classroom, chaperoning trips, or serving on school workdays.
Technology
In our age of seemingly limitless technology, where so many of our interactions are mediated by screens, we believe that face-to-face, in-person, human interaction fosters the best learning environment. We are intentionally low-tech, which means that when we use tech (sparingly in the lower grades, only gradually introducing key skills in upper school), we do so with a specific purpose in mind, and only after we are sure we couldn’t accomplish the same goal without a screen. We believe in highly relational, highly tactile learning. Put more simply: less swiping, more penmanship; less tech, more running around outside; less screen time, more face-to-face time.
History
At Providence, history forms the spine of our curriculum. Knowing and understanding our past is essential to preserving the values, knowledge, and lessons of those who have come before us. We believe that the Western tradition is rich with these types of lessons: from the Greco-Roman emphasis on virtue, to the integrated faith of medieval Christendom, to the freedoms of modern democracy. In the face of increasingly deconstructionist and critical approaches to history, we seek to avoid what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”—the idea that because we are more modern, we are automatically wiser. Instead, we believe we owe a debt to those who have come before us. To be clear, some of the lessons we draw from Western tradition and even our own country’s history are based on our failures. But good history is honest about both the virtues and vices of our past that we may learn and grow from them in the future.
Christian Values
The myth of “values-neutral” school options has never been more apparent. Every school operates from a set of norms or principles that drive decisions about curriculum and school life. Those norms shape everything from how a school deals with conflict, to how it approaches controversial topics, and what answers it offers students to the hard questions of our day. At Providence, we believe that the principles that guide a school should come from Scripture—where God provides us with a clear vision of who he is and what he is calling us to be. How does this shape the life of the school? It means we start our school day with matins—a morning prayer service where we recalibrate and align ourselves with God and his Word. It means we hold to traditional Christian teachings around gender and sexuality. It means that the Christian faith is not just a subject we teach, but the foundation of how we approach education as a whole.
Each of these distinctives sit as bedrock to our school’s philosophical foundation. We aspire to be a school that is transparent, involves parents, uses technology intentionally, cultivates a deep understanding of history, and disciples students in the Christian faith. Being a private, classical, Christian school offers a unique opportunity to pursue those distinctives and provides a rich alternative for families who share similar values.
Mr. Kyle Keating has served at Providence since January 2013. He teaches upper school history and theology and also serves as Dean. He and his wife, Christy, have called Saint Louis home since 2010. They have one daughter in Providence’s lower school and an infant son.
