TPS Educational Values

Academic education is a Christian virtue, not an institution.

• Academic education is an original project of the western medieval Christian church.
• The original intent of academic education was to instruct and guide the laity in the study of God’s Two Books — the Bible and the “book” of the created world.
• Throughout the Bible we see that the world was created for the purpose of declaring and glorifying God (e.g., Ps 19:1), so we consider that study of the created world is an important aspect of worship and service.
• The original goal of Christian education in the Two Books was pursuit of virtue, not vocation.

Christian education should be pursued in excellence in all subjects.

• The NT Greek for “virtue” literally means “excellence”, and the Bible encourages us to seek that virtue in all our endeavors (e.g., 2 Pet 1:1-7).
• All academic subjects are important to study for worship and service (e.g., Jn 1:3, Ps 24:1-2).
• We reject the unvirtuous idea that a student who is not naturally talented at a particular subject should be exempted or dissuaded from learning to his individual full God-designed potential in that subject. This disrespects our children and dishonors their Creator.

The Bible in its original text is authoritative for truth and virtue.

• The Bible in its original text is authoritative as a source of truth and virtue, and so it is to be studied academically in excellence for the purpose of understanding its intent in its original context and as applied to our current context (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
• We consider academic study of the Bible – history, doctrine, theology, worldview – to be an essential school subject that should be in every student’s core curriculum at every level.

Our identity and worth are derived from being created in God’s Image and redeemed by Jesus’s sacrifice, not from grades or scores.

• We consider grades to be measures of accomplishment of specific course objectives, not measurements of identity and worth.
• We consider a well-earned B more virtuous than a contrived A.
• This gives our kids freedom to do hard things and attempt big things without fear of failure or diminishment.

Labor is a part of worship.

• We want our older students to learn to see all labor (including difficult schoolwork) and service as a form of worship (as in Genesis 1-3), so all labor (including schoolwork) is to be performed as unto the Lord (Col 3:23).
• We want our students to experience the freedom to do hard things and attempt big things without fear of failure or diminishment.