Identifying Foundational Principles of Orthodox Early Childhood Education

Presv. Ana Coman, Ph.D.

Saint Kosmas Conference
California
November 2018

This presentation was originally made by Presv. Ana Coman at the Orthodox Curriculum Writing Initiative in Chicago, IL in August 2018 in conjunction with the Orthodox Christian Schools Association, where she served as the cohort lead for Early Childhood Education. The presentation was repeated by Presv. Ana at the Saint Kosmas Conference in California in November 2018.

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transcript:

Good afternoon, everyone!

My name is Presbytera Ana Coman. I'm from the parish of St. John the Baptist in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Today I'm going to talk to you about the Foundational Principles in Orthodox Early Childhood Education. This is mostly a repeat of a talk that I gave in Chicago a few months ago as part of the Orthodox Curriculum Writing Initiative. 

The Orthodox Curriculum Writing Initiative in Chicago was a 3-day workshop to get together and start making the first steps towards writing Orthodox curriculum at every level for every age. And so I was working with a group of really wonderful early childhood educators that are in day schools to put down the first pass at this, which was really to look through the standards. What standards do we want our Orthodox schools to meet? That was the goal. And so this presentation is something that we based our whole work on — the 3-day work that we did. This presentation was our platform from which we operated. 

Some of this talk is straight out of the Handbook for Starting an Orthodox School, and some of it is just principles for early childhood education. This is something that we can all take, whether we are educating in schools or homeschooling our own children. This is applicable to everybody. Before we start, I would like to know, by a show of hands, how many of you are educators in schools? And how many of you are homeschooling parents? OK, so it's about even. Everything I’m going to say will to apply to everybody. I put myself in both of those categories, as well. 

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The whole point of this talk is to think about what are the goals of education, and then specifically, what is Orthodox education? What are the goals of Orthodox education? How do we do it? How do we do it in a school setting and how do we do it at home with these youngest children, these early childhood children, which I'm defining as roughly between ages three and six, so including preschool and kindergarten. What assumptions do we make as Orthodox Christians? How do those assumptions influence our educational decisions? What are the characteristics of early childhood? How does our Orthodox thinking apply to early childhood education? 

It's really ironic in a way, but so much of what I'm going to say has been already said in the last couple of days by different speakers at this conference. But I really don't think there are any accidents. I think that it just boils down to a few principles. And it's good; it's a comforting thing to know that where Orthodox education is concerned, there are only a few fundamental principles that we need to be concerned about. So, throughout this talk, I'm going to try to pull from what the other speakers have already said wherever it makes sense.

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Before we can talk about education, it's good to start with the end goal in mind. As Orthodox Christians, our end goal should be to raise saints for the Church. 

St. John Chrysostom said, "The primary goal in the education of children is to teach and to give examples of a virtuous life." We heard an entire talk yesterday on the virtuous life and how that applies to education. If you were in Dr. Tarpley's talk yesterday, he defined a virtuous life as man's cooperation with God's grace. He talked about how there is no virtue apart from God, and that the start of virtue is repentance and the sacramental life of the Church. So all of those things are what St. John Chrysostom is saying, and what we should be thinking about for our goals of education. (Tarpley, Dr. Mark. “Seeking Virtue: Why an Orthodox Approach to Virtue Is Critical to Educating Our Children Today”)

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I like to think of education as a partnership between the Church, the home, and the school. It's kind of like a triangle. If we have a triangle, it's just to point out that the Church and the home are where a lot of the spiritual formation takes place. Whatever we're doing in schools — whether it's in our homeschool or whether it's in a day school — should be supporting the spiritual development taking place in the home and the Church, so they're all working together. I've also heard church, home, and school described as the three pillars of education. 

The word "education" is from "educere" which is a Latin word that means "to lead out" or "to guide out." Sometimes when we talk about education, the world would have us believe that it's about putting stuff in. We think about education as putting information into the child. But in reality, it's not. Education is where we lead them out. St. Justin Popovich said, "What other purpose does education have than to enlighten man?"

About early childhood education specifically, I think the Church fathers are very clear that children this age [three through six] should be at home, in the nurturing environment of the family. The Church fathers talk about education — even formal education at home — starting at age seven. 

However, the reality is that we do have these young kids in schools. Parents work; parents are not able to be home. So, when we're teaching these kids in a day school environment, we need always to be really aware of the role that we're playing. We need to be supporting the Church and the home, but also taking on some of that nurturing part [of the child's formation] that the child should be getting at home.

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In the effort to discuss what the goals of education are, I pulled some things off the web by educated people that are educators themselves. What does the secular world say about education? Here are some of the things that I found. The goal of education — so says the secular world — is for kids to learn how to function in society, to know the norms, values, and skills in society, to grow into productive citizens, socialization, sustain themselves and be able to support themselves when they get older, increase intelligence, increase desire and ability to learn about the world, develop relationships, work with peers, become a good person, and become capable. This is what the world says. And these are not necessarily bad things, in themselves, most of them. But it is not what we think of when we think of Orthodox education. We come from a completely different point of view. 

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I really like how Dr. Tarpley summed it up. His definition of education is the formation of the whole child within the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. The analogy he gave can apply to everything we're talking about here. He showed a big circle representing the entire formation of the whole child, and then one little circle inside of the larger one indicating what we would have for the "schooling." The smaller circle represents what we think of as educating the mind, or the subjects that we think about when we think about “school.” (Tarpley, Dr. Mark. “Seeking Virtue: Why an Orthodox Approach to Virtue Is Critical to Educating Our Children Today”)

Then Fr. Matthew also talked about this same thing. He talked about the different kinds of education, the secular and the spiritual education. (Penney, Fr. Matthew. “Seeking Wisdom: Orthodox Education and the Right Relationship of Human and Divine Wisdom According to St. Gregory Palamas”)

As Orthodox, we always need to keep this in mind. We need to keep in mind what our perspective is because it is so different from everything the world is saying. If you're on the playground or picking your kids up from a class, you'll hear what the world says about education. The traditional thinking is that my child needs to be in a good elementary school so that they can get into a good high school so that they can go to a great college. Then they're going to get a great college education so that they can get a great job so that they can support themselves and make lots of money. This is how success is defined in this life. None of that is necessarily bad in itself. But it's not the way that we think about things as Orthodox Christians. 

As Orthodox, we consider the spiritual formation to be the most important. Any worldly education — though there's nothing wrong with the worldly education if it is used properly — is to grow and use the God-given talents, and to use the education and these talents for a vocation for whatever God is calling us to do. This leads us to success in eternity. 

For those of you who are school educators — most of the parents come, and they want to know that their kids are going to get a good education. For early childhood, most of them want to know: "OK, is my child going to be ready for school? Are they going to be ready for kindergarten? Are they going to be ready for 1st grade?" There is nothing wrong with academic education being excellent. It should be excellent. But it is still secondary to the spiritual formation.

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What is Orthodox education? Orthodoxy is the true way of life and the correct perspective of the nature of man. It is not a particular set of religious doctrines. This Orthodox perspective should be at the core of all the schooling. It's not just adding Orthodox elements to a secular program, where you might have a religion class, or you might have a little bit here and there. It needs to permeate through everything that we do. There is nothing wrong with having a specific class for catechism, but it needs to be a mindset for everything we do in school, in our home, and in our homeschools. The school must be a faithful extension of church life. We are trying to rightly form the souls of the children, not just inform their brains. This applies to any age-level, but of course, we're talking here about early childhood.

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The Orthodox Church views an education — and this was said so many times yesterday in more eloquent ways — as academic schooling within this larger goal of formation. “Raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” That's from Ephesians. And this idea of nurture — or sometimes people say paideia — is bringing oneself, through a study of the scripture, to conformity with Christ by means of imitation, which is what St. Gregory of Nyssa said. Although in schools we're primarily concerned with the academic, schools can be structured in content and methods to complement this broader project of Christian paideia. We should be supporting the spiritual formation of our students. And there are many different ways to do that. St. Justin Popovich said, "Education is the second half of the God-Man’s heart, and the Church is the first."

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Here is a slide on our Orthodox Christian assumptions as they compare to popular assumptions. This is taken right out of the Starting an Orthodox Christian School Handbook. There are some assumptions that form who we are as Orthodox, but it is different from what the world is saying. I'm bringing these up over and over again because it's so easy for them to seep in. It's easy for them to seep into our homeschools and our schools, and we don't even realize it because we are so affected by how we were brought up. And if you came through the public school system in this country, that's what's in there, and that's what we fall back on. 

In terms of Orthodox Christian assumptions, we believe that there is a transcendent order as opposed to the popular assumption that there is skepticism of ultimate order. We believe in Truth. The current assumption is that there are subjective values to be believed. We believe in the celebration of variety and mystery, whereas the popular assumption in the schools today is the tendency towards reductionism and rationalism. We believe that we have confidence in the good, as opposed to society which will say there is confidence in the useful. Do you see how these play against each other? We believe that man is flawed but significant, as opposed to the popular assumption that man is good but insignificant. The Orthodox assumption is that man is a person as opposed to the popular assumption, which is that man is an individual— person versus the individual. We are people, but we exist within the Body of Christ. And the Orthodox assumption would be that there is a reliance on tradition and of the past, whereas the popular belief is that there is a skepticism of anything old or anything great in the past. 

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I know it might be hard to digest this with just me saying this. But how do we make these assumptions and move them into Orthodox practices? Well, one thing is really clear — and it applies all the way down to the youngest child — and that is, we need to pull the children out of their native self-centeredness and redirect their focus towards God and their neighbor. 

Of course, we want them to succeed. We all want to succeed, and we want our children to succeed. The question is not success. It's success at what? What do we want them to succeed at? We want them to succeed at growing in virtue, growing in charity, thoughtfulness and reflectiveness, being a good son or daughter, or sibling or parent, being a good and faithful servant of Christ. These are the things that we dwell on and that we want to make sure that we instill in them.

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St. Theophan the Recluse, gives us a great road map for how to do this at home or in the schools. He talks about three powers of the soul that need educating: the intellect (or the mind), the will, and the heart. And he talks about exercises that will encourage that. Another way for us to think about this would be: how can we educate those powers within our schools and our homes? 

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The first of these is the mind or the intellect. This is the one we always think about when we think about educating. This is where we would learn all of our subjects. This is the category that would even be the reading of the Bible or learning about the faith, like in Sunday school. What are some good things for educating the mind? Well, reading and hearing the Word of God, writings of the Holy Fathers, the God-pleasers. Even our youngest children should hear this; we should be reading these things to them on a regular basis. Studying and absorbing the God-given truths or catechesis, asking questions of those older and more experienced, especially the priests, the monastics, and having discussions about the things that they're learning. These are all for the mind. These are all good ways to educate the mind. 

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There are other parts of our being that need educating, and one of them is the will. How do we educate the will? One way that we educate the will is submission to the whole church rule, to the church calendar, submission to family, and to the civil law, to the rules of our country, and our classrooms, or the rules of whatever environment we're in that has rules, obedience to God's will, obeying the conscience, doing good deeds, and fulfilling any promises that you make. 

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So, we have the mind and the will, but there's a third one — that is the heart. Ways that we educate the heart are attending holy services, prayer both as specified by the Church, and by keeping a home prayer rule, using holy crosses and icons and other sacred objects, and observing the holy customs of our Church.

St. Theophan lays this all out. He actually lays this out for monastics and adults, but there's no reason not to use this with our youngest children. 

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What are some practical ways that we can do this? How do we do this in our homes and classrooms? 

Daily reading of the Scriptures; daily readings of the Lives of the Saints and the Holy Fathers: There are so many beautiful, wonderful books about the saints written for children, with beautiful illustrations.

Daily prayers at home: Even the youngest children can have a home prayer rule, something that they do regularly every day. 

Catechesis: teaching them about the faith, what do we believe as Orthodox Christians. 

Discussions: family discussions, classroom discussions about what we've been learning. Ask: "What did you just hear?" "What do you understand?" or even, "What did you see when you went to Church today?"

Divine Services: the Sunday service, the major feast days. If we're homeschooling, we should be able to make it to church during the week. Hopefully, your local parishes have services that are offered. The more times we can have our children in church, the better. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

The sacrament of confession: Even if the littlest ones are not going to confession yet, we can be showing them how we're doing it, and talking about it.

All of these things, plus having a relationship with a spiritual father, participating in philanthropy — these are all things that even our youngest children can do. 

I know it’s difficult to take young children to church because I've had young children myself, but it is so important. It's just like Fr. Peter said earlier: We cannot teach without doing. We must be in church ourselves, and we must have our children there with us. (Heers, Fr. Peter. “Seeking Truth: Forming Children in the Love of Truth”) They don't learn how to be in church unless they are in church. It's a struggle, and it's our ascetic struggle as parents to take the youngest children to church. Even though we may not get to pray very much, and we might not get to pay attention very much, we need to have them there. That is what our role is, because that's where they're getting the education of their heart — in the Church. We don't have to teach them anything for this. They just have to be there, and be with God. And they have this relationship with God through that. I'll talk more about that in a minute.

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What are some characteristics of early childhood? I come from a Montessori point of view so I think about these as sensitive periods of development. These sensitive periods are times that a child of any age — but especially when they're young, there are so many of them — they pass through well-defined stages. And during these stages, children are sensitive to certain aspects of their environment, and they absorb things from their environment with ease during that time. In Montessori, you would call it the 'absorbent mind.' Sometimes we say, "Oh, they're like sponges; they can learn a language so much easier when they're younger." And then there's a definite end to each of these sensitive periods. 

Some of the sensitive periods of early childhood that we're talking about — in this 3 through 6-year-old range — are: They're sensitive to order; they really want order. They're learning bodily movement with purpose. They're learning how to use their bodies, and they really want to do that. They really want to be like adults; they want to learn those skills with their hands and their arms and everything. Grace and courtesy. Sensorial — using all of their senses — they're in the sensitive time for that. And it's their sensitive period for spiritual formation, so it's a prime time for us as parents and educators to take advantage of that and really help them, give them whatever they need to cultivate their own relationship with God, to know Him. 

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This is a quote from the Philokalia. It says the spiritual faculty, the nous, of the baptized infant knows God through immediate experience. We are blessed in the Orthodox Church that we have infant baptism, and they're full participants in the life of the Church from a very, very young age. They're baptized and chrismated; they can receive Holy Communion and they're full members of the Body of Christ. And so this relationship that they have with God — it said they know God through immediate experience. This spiritual formation that the children gain — it’s not academic, and it's not intellectual, it's not something that can be taught, it's a response of their spiritual faculty to God directly. In order to give them these experiences, we must put them in the right environment for these experiences. We can't really teach them, but we can put them in the environment. 

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Children have a natural desire to be in relationship with God. Sometimes we say, "They're so pure; they're so much closer to God than we are." And there are certainly many cases of children having spiritual experiences or telling us about things that we can't necessarily see. 

Another characteristic of this age is that children naturally live in the present moment. They are here now, and so what they're experiencing now is the most important thing.

Their hearts are naturally able to realize God. They're open and receptive to that, to realizing God, to knowing Him. 

Children hear the word of God and experience worship with their whole beings.

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Of course, our church is the prime place for them to know God and to experience Him because we have everything, and it's so sensorial. Our Divine Liturgy — if we just take them; we don't even have to teach them — the liturgy is what teaches them. The church life is what teaches them. This is a quote by St. John of Kronstadt: 

The Church, through the temple and Divine Services, acts upon the entire man, educating him wholly; it acts upon his sight, hearing, smell, feeling, taste, imagination, mind and will, by the splendor of the icons and of the whole temple, by the ringing of the bells, by the singing of the choir, by the fragrance of the incense, the kissing of the Gospel, of the cross and the holy icons, by the prosphora, the singing, and the sweet sound of the reading of the Scriptures.

Everything, everything is there.

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So back to education in early childhood. What does it look like? Are we really talking about reading, writing, and math? If we have this Orthodox mindset — that the spiritual formation and spiritual education is the important part — then this is what we should be working towards at this age. We should be teaching them obedience, discipline, and the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, love of God, a relationship with God. We're forming their souls.

St. Clement of Alexandria said,

The primary lesson for life must be implanted in the soul from the earliest age. The primary lesson for children is to know the eternal God, the One who gives everlasting life.

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So, back to what I told you about things we should be doing in the classroom and at home: reading the Scriptures, reading the Lives of the Saints, taking them to church — this is just so important because that's their prime area for education. And as parents, and even as teachers, it is not necessarily an easy thing to take them, but it's something that we must do. I just wanted to hit that point one more time. It’s the most important thing we can do.

When we are trying to give our kids, or our students, an Orthodox education, we need to be really intentional about it. I would say for those of you who are teaching these youngest ones in the classroom, we need to be even extra intentional, because, in a way, if we're teaching this age in the classroom we're replacing something that they would usually get at home. 

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Raising children, instructing children, teaching children — we can think about this as an ascetic discipline. Just like Fr. Peter said earlier, in order to teach we have to be doing it ourselves. So our first step in passing on and doing what we can for the spiritual formation of these children is to make sure we're working on our own spiritual formation. We need to be striving to live a virtuous life. We need to try to be open to being vessels of the Holy Spirit. We need to be going to church and participating in the sacraments and experiencing the life of the Church as fully as we possibly can. (Heers, Fr. Peter. “Seeking Truth: Forming Children in the Love of Truth”)

We also need to make sure that for our kids, and for our students, we're trying to closely guard what they see, hear, and experience. Just as we're trying to give them all of these positive experiences for their spiritual formation, we also want to guard them against those things that would not be beneficial for them.

When we're educating, when we're working on the spiritual formation of these kids, we also need to be thinking that they should be using all their senses to experience this.

And, of course, do not let our personal struggles and our struggles with behaviors and other things get in the way of any of that. 

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I think teachers have extra responsibilities because you are the interface between the home and the school. I think a lot of times parents come, and they have certain expectations. When they think of education, they think of the worldly education, and although they might be thinking the spiritual formation too, they want to make sure that they're getting whatever they expect for the academic. So teachers have the responsibility to educate families on the proper spiritual formation that they should be giving their kids at home, and try to educate or persuade or convince them in every way that you can on what's important in the early childhood education. And make sure that they're trying to do what they can at home for the children. 

Of course, we all need to try to be models of virtue, whether we're in the home or in the classroom.

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Here's a quote by Abba Theodora that is a high calling for teachers. I'm going to read it to you:

A teacher must be a stranger to love of power, untouched by vainglory, far from pride, not deluded by flattery, not blinded by gifts, not enslaved to the belly, not held in thrall by anger, but longsuffering, forbearing, and above all humble. He (or she) should be discerning and patient, exercising the care of a guardian, and loving the soul of his (or her) pupils.

That is our high calling — for all of us — whether we're educating at home or in the classroom. We need to strive towards those qualities in ourselves. 

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St. Demetri of Rostov gives us one more, and I'm going to close with this: He gives us kind of a warning about how important our job is, especially for these youngest kids. 

A young child is like a board prepared for icon painting. Whatever the iconographer paints on it, honorable or dishonorable, holy or sinful, an angel or a demon, it remains forever. The same applies to a young child: that upbringing which he is given, those manners he is taught—whether God-pleasing or God-despising, angelic or demonic—shall be part of him for the rest of his life.

So, may God help us all to be good teachers and educators of these young children. 

QUESTIONS:

Presv. Ana: I'll take any questions if you want to ask me anything or if you have any comments. 

Audience: I work at a Roman Catholic school. Do you have any thoughts about if and how I can do that as an Orthodox Christian? 

Presv. Ana: I think that's probably an issue to discuss with your spiritual father. I think that wherever we are and whoever we're with, we need to be the light — the light of Orthodoxy — and stand by our Truths, but for specifics, I refer to your spiritual father. 

Audience: You mentioned a handbook for starting an Orthodox school. Where is that? Is that something we can buy? 

Presv. Ana: Yes, it is. There is an association. It's a not-for-profit. It's called the Orthodox Christian Schools Association, and they publish a lot of resources for parishes trying to start Orthodox schools. They have a website. I think they would like to grow that effort. They have a handbook that can be purchased, and it's really really good. It's a great way to form a school — on those principles in the handbook. 

Audience: Does it apply to homeschool? 

Presv. Ana: I have one with me. You can look at it, and then you can see whether it’s something you think would apply. 

Audience: When you have taught young children about obedience, the habits, fruits of the Spirit, love for God, and those kinds of things — have you explicitly taught them? Or do you just try to be the example of these things? I was trying to introduce to my granddaughter books about virtues, stories about virtues, conversations about the habit of obedience, etc. Have you used any kind of a source to teach a child those things? And how do you think that should be done? 

Presv. Ana: I think reading stories from the Bible and Lives of the Saints are great. I think that young children look to us as their role models, and they imitate us, so I think that we need to be cultivating within ourselves a spirit of virtue and obedience. I know that within the Montessori Early Childhood program, there is a lot of obedience built into the way the children do things. They have freedom within limits, freedom within very clear limits. And I think that’s a concept that can be applied in the home or in any classroom. Because ultimately — You can give examples; you can lead them — it's not something that you can just say, "Ok, this is what it means, and this is what you're going to do." 

Audience: When teaching in schools, how do you recommend educating parents on their role in the spiritual development of children at home? And how would you navigate teaching the spiritual life in schools when you have students that aren't Orthodox? 

Presv. Ana: Are you teaching in an Orthodox school? 

Audience: Yes, and about half my students are Orthodox, and half are not. 

Presv. Ana: I think it would have to go back to how the school was structured. When the parents enrolled their child, was it unabashedly stated, "We're Orthodox, and we're going to teach Orthodoxy"? Because if that's the case, then there's no reason why you wouldn't. I think that if your school is Orthodox, then you should be Orthodox, and not be ashamed of it. We need to stand by what we believe.