Whenever summer break rolls around, the thought often comes to mind (at least, to mine—maybe to yours too) that now, after the long span of the school year, there will be a little time to have life run somewhat more “normally”: no homework in the afternoon, no grading for the teachers, no driving to school every day. Vacations, weddings, etc. aside, it can be easy to see life outside of school as “real life,” more than during the school year. It’s a smaller version of the feeling “once I’m done with high school, then it’s off to real life,” or “once I’ve graduated college and have a job, then it’s off to real life.” Graduation speakers often use this kind of language, that our formal education prepares us for “real life” in the “real world.” Now you’re ready: go live your life to the fullest!
There’s no doubt that a good education forms students in how to live and think rightly in the world. But to call life during school something less than real is a mistake. Maybe school doesn’t seem like “real life” because after a certain amount of time, formal education ends. But the fact that it ends doesn’t make it less real—there are plenty of other experiences in real life that last much shorter than twelve years! Maybe school doesn’t seem like “the real world” because you’re with the same select people every day, often doing the same things over and over. But again, when is that not true outside of school? We live with our families every day, have coworkers we see every day, and have daily routines.
Probably the most common thought I’ve heard expressed in this regard, especially about Lutheran schools (and homeschools to boot), is that students are “sheltered,” that in the “real world,” they will have to confront secular ideas, that they will have to battle rampant immorality, that their Christian faith will be tested: so they have to be prepared, build up their strength in this controlled environment. These challenges are all realities in the world, to be sure—but the devil doesn’t start attacking only once students graduate from their parochial school! He attacks them right now, just as he attacks all Christians.
It’s true that our students are sheltered. But that’s not a bad thing, or a thing to be outgrown. The Christian should always want to be sheltered under the Word of God, in the company of fellow Christians. It’s also far from living some fake life. That’s what’s so fantastic about good Christian schools like ours. Our students are living real life, in the real world, right now, in or out of school, because they are alive in Baptism, steeped in God’s Word, receiving Christ’s body and blood, living together as His Church and as Christian families. That life in Christ is the most real life any of us can have.
In Christ,
Mr. Hahn
