We love the Protestant Reformed schools where we were raised and where we have raised our children. God has given us much over the past years, for which we are deeply grateful. Even as we leave the Protestant Reformed Churches with tears, given an open door we would be happy as parents to continue the use of the Protestant Reformed schools to train our children. In the current environment many of us no longer have an opportunity to guide these schools by membership and active participation in an association for Protestant Reformed education, and so we seek to form our own association. We hold no bitterness against these schools but are deeply thankful for the education we have received in them and the years we have been able to participate with fellow saints to teach our children.

Having been given an opportunity by God to make a new beginning, we joyfully and in love for our God join as like-minded believers to continue to seek the best education for God’s children. As we make this beginning, we must start by reflecting on the past approximately eighty years of Protestant Reformed education. We must be honest in our evaluation to acknowledge and follow what is good and to seek focused improvement where Protestant Reformed schools have shown weakness.

As a part of this reflection, I would like to share my evaluation of two things that are right and two things that could be improved in Protestant Reformed education. 

The Protestant Reformed schools have the right basis and foundation for education. The basis is the word of God and his covenant relationship with his people. The history of Protestant Reformed education is our history, and the principles of Protestant Reformed education are our principles. We must know and recommit to these principles before we take a single move as our own association, and as a part of that, each of us, especially parents, ought to reread the book Reformed Education by Prof. David Engelsma.

The Protestant Reformed schools have the right ownership. Each school belongs to the parents, because the parents are those who have taken the baptism vows and are required to teach their children in the fear of God’s name. The school board operates the school, but the board members answer to the association of parents. The teachers stand in the place of the parents and must have the support of the parents in order to teach effectively.

The Protestant Reformed schools have two practical shortcomings that we ought to consider and learn from as we consider how to move forward in training our children.

The first practical limitation is that these schools are structured in such a way that teachers are incentivized to move to larger communities and schools, especially for more specialized roles in the junior high and high school grade levels. Because of the number of students in these regions, teachers can prepare for fewer, specialized courses in their areas of expertise, which courses are delivered multiple times daily. By contrast, in Protestant Reformed schools in smaller communities, teachers need to prepare for a wide variety of courses delivered daily, often outside of their fields of expertise. For committed teachers this preparation necessarily consumes evenings and summers, in addition to the side jobs frequently required to make financial ends meet.

The second limitation is that the Protestant Reformed schools are structured to operate almost entirely independently of each other. Although there is some coordination through the Federation of Protestant Reformed School Societies, the key challenge for small communities is not merely coordination with larger schools but the basic need of having enough teachers and finding a way even to support and maintain a school. By passive incentives that encourage teachers to move to larger communities, the larger schools do more to harm the formation of smaller schools than they do to help these weaker communities who have dramatic difficulty in getting schools off the ground. 

While historically our parental schools have been organized and operated entirely locally, the principles of Reformed education do not require local control. The principles of Reformed education require parental control. This parental control of the school should be considered in light of our age of constant development in communication and technology, rather than assuming that because schools have always been local, that remains the only option to us. In our recommitment to the principles of Reformed education, we ought to consider moving forward in a way that is good for all Reformed Protestant believers—for our brothers and sisters in smaller communities and for our teachers without regard to the communities in which they live.

Starting schools will be challenging. Godly teachers are a precious and rare resource, and in order to have a school we must have a minimum number of qualified teachers. We are starting from nothing from the viewpoint of material possessions: we have precious few options for suitable buildings and nothing in terms of capital or assets.

Yet God has given us a new beginning, and we should not squander the opportunity that God has given us. We do not need to redevelop the principles of Reformed education, having a deep understanding of these principles from our forebears. We are not encumbered with the last eighty or so years of Protestant Reformed educational history. God has blessed us with children, and with the responsibility God has given us to teach them, he will surely provide the means to do so.

As we consider this new beginning, we may well struggle to consider the difficulty of the way in which God has placed us. By way of encouragement, I leave you with several considerations for a path forward.

First, we live in a world where transportation and communication technologies have made massive progress. These have been used broadly in higher education and in the corporate world. Thanks to God’s providence, these technologies have also made inroads into our communities and our education in the last year. We ought to consider how the use of these God-given technologies could be developed to potentially even share teachers regardless of the communities they call home. As an extension of this concept, we ought to consider carefully how we could help families in very small church communities, providing options for remote learning instead of home-schooling or using nominally Christian schools. This idea may be a better option for high school and junior high, where teaching is somewhat more specialized and students are more mature. There are challenges to overcome here; we should not focus on the challenges themselves but on how they might be overcome to provide the best education for our children.

Second, we ought to consider pursuing broad organization and cooperation with all like-minded believers who have the same goal of solidly Reformed, principled education. Since we share the same principles and basis of Reformed education and the God-given means of technology to teach across distances, finding ways to organize together and to invite participation from families outside of our local communities will provide a foundation by which stronger communities might support the weaker, and especially by which the broader community of believers might support those who are isolated. This may take a variety of forms, but the difficulty of such a concept should spur us on to determine how we can work together toward the goal of Reformed Protestant education. The benefits of such a concept will certainly help to build closer ties among our children, far more than could an annual convention of our children.

Third, let us consider the question of where we seek to begin, considering the resources God is pleased to provide. Do we follow the path of history and begin with primary school, following with high school years later? Or do we put our first focus on our children who are maturing into their teenage years and for whom a solid Reformed Protestant grounding and godly friendships will leave them with a foundation that they do not need to question? As we consider the path forward, I leave you with a quote from Herman Hoeksema from the Standard Bearer in 1937:

The age when our boys and girls attend high school is the period in their life when they begin to reflect, to think for themselves, when, more than in the years of their childhood, they are able to imbibe and understand definite principles and doctrines, when it is of utmost importance, that, both with respect to their thinking and to their conduct they are guided in the right direction. (Herman Hoeksema, “Our Own Christian High School,” Standard Bearer 13, no. 22 [September 15, 1937]: 508)

We are a small group with limited resources, but God has blessed us with unity—we are not in this as individuals. Our beginning is small. The blessing of God is not in making our efforts to appear great in the eyes of men; rather, he will bless our efforts by giving us to keep our vows in the raising of our children.

The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things? (Zech. 4:9–10)