Dr. Caleb Rosado is director of the Urban Economic Development Program at the Campolo College of Graduate and Professional Studies at Eastern University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
May 17, 2004, marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision—Brown v. Board of Education—that ended the “separate but equal” doctrine handed down by the same court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. While the Brown decision was a legal triumph, the five ensuing decades have demonstrated that more than the law is needed to end discrimination, for in many ways things are worse today. African American and Latino students still attend “emerging majority”–dominated schools, largely because the nation embraced neither “separate” nor “equal” in heart and practice. Pronouncements alone do not bring change. Only moral internalization can effect change from the heart.
Most people oppose change but still believe they can remain successful. As Steve Wilstein (1994) reminds us, we cannot carry on “simply by doing the same things that once brought success. That will be true only if the world doesn’t change.” And Eric Hoffer (1973, 32) poignantly describes what happens when people don’t grow in the face of change: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
How does one go about “transforming culture” in a manner that engenders positive change? In light of the Brown decision, how can Christian education become “a leader in overcoming these obstacles,” as ACSI President Ken Smitherman (retired 2009) suggests? I propose two processes: a shift from a fragmentary worldview to one of wholeness, and a recognition that all content is subject to context.
We live in a fragmented world dominated by a fragmentary worldview. Fragmentation is the product of thought that breaks the world up into bits and pieces, and creates unity where none exists. The boundaries that separate and unify races, nations, cultures, classes, genders, neighborhoods, and religions result from thought imposed on reality. They are a product of a Cartesian mind-body split, with its non-Christian dualistic view of reality.
A biblically based worldview recognizes the interdependent nature of our social experience, but traditional education is fragmentary. It approaches learning by studying the parts and how they connect. The problem is that this approach often does not move beyond the parts, nor does it always see their interrelationships. The wholistic approach sees the “whole in every part,” much like a smaller version of a hologram. Thus, urban and suburban schools cannot be understood in isolation from the whole of education and from each other.
The biblical concept of salvation means “to make whole,” to make “at-one-ment” with God. Sin separates; grace makes whole. At the root of the biblical word shalom, or “peace,” lies the concept of “wholeness.” Wholeness is key to transforming culture. Jeremiah 29:7 might be paraphrased as follows: “But seek the wholeness [shalom] of the city.… for in its wholeness you will find your wholeness.” Our wholeness is found only in our interconnectedness with others. When we empower others to experience wholeness, we experience the same.
Thus we cannot be whole by ourselves in suburbia, divorced from the urban context. Jesus prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22–23, NRSV; italics added). Jesus is saying that the world will not understand the significance of Christ’s coming to earth if the church does not demonstrate by its inward character and outward comportment the wholeness He desires.
What often passes for Christian “oneness” today is nothing more than the segregation that Brown v. Board of Education legally eliminated but that is with us still in spirit and practice. This segregation can be overcome only by understanding the second important principle: All content is subject to context! Our context—our deep-level value systems—determines both what we understand and what lies outside that understanding. Thus the all-too-pervasive fragmentary worldview constructs a context far too narrow and exclusive to enable an understanding of the wholeness of humanity and the implications for all human relationships. Once we expand our context, however, our content broadens to include what we did not understand before.
Truly understanding the principle of oneness expands our context to include seeking the well-being of all of humanity, for Christ said that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, NIV). And only by seeking the wholeness of the entire city, school, or church will we find our own wholeness. If the context is not expanded, any change is simply cosmetic, and instead of authentically transforming culture, we are merely tweaking it. The implications for education are a quantum leap from what we currently see in the world, and especially in Christian education.
Take ACSI’s outstanding track record in understanding the unique problems faced by missionary kids (MKs) and Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and preparing teachers and students going abroad for international ministries. ACSI is to be highly commended for providing training for staff and families alike in cultural differences, cultural stressors, the TCK’s unique challenges, multiculturalism, cross-cultural transition, and cultural entry, exit, and reentry—and offering credit for such training.
How would Christian urban education be different, however, if leaders recognized that school children in urban schools share many of the same characteristics as TCKs? If it is important to have panels of TCKs, MKs, and expatriate kids talk about their experiences, and to prepare teachers to work with these children, how much more would it be beneficial to provide multicultural training, with an understanding of cross-cultural differences, for those working in an urban context? Wouldn’t having a panel of urban “TCKs” and “UKs” (Urban Kids) be of benefit in understanding how to teach in an urban school?
Failure to see the connection between international cultural awareness and urban cultural sensitivity is the result of a fragmentary worldview that sees everything as different, distinct, distant, and divided. But if we alter our context from fragmentation to wholeness, the content changes as well, for all is one! It is not the international child alone who is multicultural. So also is the urban child living in a third world context within the first world.
We must understand that crossing Martin Luther King Jr. Drive is as important as crossing the ocean to live and teach in another cultural context. If the content of the teacher/student training must change for international ministry, should the same not be true for urban ministry? Fragmentation prevents making this connection, but wholeness makes it possible.
The moral demands of the gospel, and the challenges of demographic change to Christian education, suggest that ultimately genuine cultural change is not a top-down imposition nor a bottom-up movement. Rather, it is an inside-out transformation emanating from the heart of wholeness.
References
Hoffer, Eric. 1973. Reflections on the human condition. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Wilstein, Steve. 1994. Getting what it takes to win. Hemispheres (United Airlines, June).
Teaching to Transform Culture in the Urban School 8.CS