Teachers, Mission Statements, and
“Education’s Larger Purposes”
by Richard A. Riesen
T
he mission statement is
a fact of modern institutional life. From the
YMCA to the First Baptist Church,
from corporate giant to local hardware store, almost every business,
agency, and firm has a mission
statement. It is your charter, your philosophy-in-brief, your
idea, what you are and do—whether sell, support, supply, service, or serve—clearly and succinctly stated so that everyone
knows and understands your reason for being.
Schools too have mission statements, declaring their
essential purpose: to build character, to inculcate tolerance
or civic responsibility, to encourage lifelong learning. No
less Christian schools: to instill a godly lifestyle or biblical
worldview, to educate the whole person—broad (but fundamental) aims beyond or beneath the staple instruction
in reading, writing, and arithmetic, summed up in two or
three sentences we can easily memorize (“Alpha and Omega
Christian School exists to ...”).
Nor is the mission statement for the constituency only.
Indeed its primary use may well be to remind us, its sponsors, distracted by urgent things, why we are here.
The question is, How important is this statement of mission to the classroom, to the instruction in reading, writing,
and arithmetic? The answer is that either it governs there or
it is of no use at all. Hammered out in sometimes fervid and
seemingly endless discourse, its point is not to molder in the
“Philosophy” or “Theology” file, along with related esoterica,
interesting for people who happen to like that sort of thing
but of no real practical value. The point of the mission statement is to inform teaching, to give it focus and emphasis.
Sometimes, though, the classroom teacher, realist that
she is, grants her obligatory approval of the school’s mission
statement at its obligatory beginning-of-the-year reading,
then proceeds simply to teach, as she has always done and
knows best how to do, convinced by much experience that a
mission statement is one thing and actual everyday teaching
is something entirely different, the former lost in the nittygritty of lessons or lectures to be given, assignments created,
papers graded. Or deliberately ignored, in the pursuit of
another agenda.
Part of the problem is, of course, temperament. Even
though all teachers are in one sense academics (they have
one or more degrees in an academic subject that they teach
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in an academic setting), not all are intellectuals, whose interests and gifts are those of analysis or abstraction. They are
much better at organizing lesson plans, creating assignments,
looking after their students’ welfare—tasks that make up,
after all, a large part of what teachers do. The philosophical
dimensions of the curriculum, or “what Christian education
really means,” are of much less concern to them, if any at
all. That, in some ways, is expected; nor is it a criticism. The
academic skills and intellectual proclivities of teachers at the
elementary level are understandably different from those
at the middle or high school level, which are different from
those at the college or graduate level, and so on. Thankfully!
The differences are necessary and good. There is a variety of
gifts, and none is superior to another; nor am I suggesting
that the analytical gift is reserved for those who teach in the
upper as opposed to the lower grades. But to the extent that a
teacher’s lack of interest in the school’s philosophy, at whatever level, means a failure to abide by it or advance it, to that
extent there is dysfunction, or at the least a less than fully
harmonious working out of the school’s stated purposes.
It must be admitted, however, that the greater problem
may be with mission statements themselves. Too many, in
Christian schools as elsewhere, are frustratingly vague, or
What remains true is that the
Christian teacher does not
teach in isolation, ideological or
otherwise. She
is not on her
own, doing her
own thing.
2006–2007 | CSE Volume 10 Number 3 | Teachers, Mission Statements, and “Education’s Larger Purposes”
downright puzzling. Just as vexing, they imply no relationship to what is actually taking place in the classroom. If the
school’s published purpose is to develop Christian leaders
for the twenty-first century, say, where is it explained how
that is accomplished by the teaching of medieval history or
introductory physics? The good teacher, concerned about her
primary responsibility to make sure her students understand
feudalism or vectors, may be forgiven for having forgotten or
abandoned the school’s mission to train Christian leaders if it
prepare them for something beyond her teaching. She is part
of a process, a wonderfully important part of a process to be
sure, but not its end.
Third, she teaches in the awareness that she is a participant in one of the great traditions of civilization, indeed the
civilizing tradition itself, what Lee Iacocca in an inspired moment called “passing civilization along from one generation
to the next.”
One of the elements of a good mission
statement, therefore, in my view, is that it
suggests, or at least does not obscure, the
relationship between the school’s larger
or more philosophical aims and what is
being done in its classrooms.
was never made clear to her how feudalism or vectors are related to Christian leadership. By the same token, the history
or physics teacher, serious about the school’s mission to train
Christian leaders, may be forgiven for having been less than
successful at producing competent historians or physicists.
One of the elements of a good mission statement,
therefore, in my view, is that it suggests, or at least does not
obscure, the relationship between the school’s larger or more
philosophical aims and what is being done in its classrooms.
I know of one school, for example, whose mission statement includes, besides nurture in the faith of Christ, that
the school means to train students in the liberal arts and
sciences—and of course that is exactly what, one assumes,
teachers are doing in history, literature, chemistry, and calculus courses. There is no confusion between advertised intent
and the more immediate goals of classroom teaching.
Hindrances to a full correspondence on this issue between ideal and real will no doubt continue to plague us,
needing always to be worked at. It is in the nature of things,
and part of their interest. What remains true is that the
Christian teacher does not teach in isolation, ideological or
otherwise. She is not on her own, doing her own thing.
First of all, she teaches, as I have said, in light of the
school’s mission. It is hoped that that mission allows for,
if it does not positively promote, negotiation between the
school’s specific academic and its broader Christian purposes.
Second, she teaches with her students’ long-term intellectual and spiritual welfare in view. The kindergarten
teacher knows that her students will soon be 6th-grade students, then 10th-grade, then college or university students,
as well as mature men and women. Her teaching is meant to
All of this underscores both the humility and the sense
of greatness that ought to attend our teaching. Humility
because we are neither independent nor unique. We are part
of a faculty and a school; we are colleagues. As colleagues we
share a common end, articulated in a statement of mission
or philosophy that we agree on and teach in the light of. Not
least, we stand in a long line of noble practitioners of a noble
calling, that of “passing civilization along on from one
generation to the next.” Even better, we are heirs of a rich
legacy of Christian scholarship, of learned and pious men
and women, devoted to Christ, who had eyes to see the wonders of a mind trained to its best use and kindled by a heart
in obedience to and worship of the Triune God.
Sense of greatness because—well, for all the same
reasons.
Richard A. Riesen, PhD, is the former principal of Pacific
Christian on the Hill in Los Angeles and the author of Piety
and Philosophy: A Primer for Christian Schools (Phoenix, AZ:
ACW Press, 2002).
Teachers, Mission Statements, and “Education’s Larger Purposes” | CSE Volume 10 Number 3 | 2006–2007
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