(by Geoff Brown)

Well, I’m just gonna call it.

We’re far enough into the year, just weeks from finishing, and you know it’s true too.

Our teachers are nuts.

C.S. Lewis explained their particular brand of insanity best when he described a scene wherein everyone within a crowd was running in the same direction.  And, in the midst of the crowd, a lone runner turned and began running, against the tide of the crowd, in the opposite direction.  

Lewis said that surely such an individual would appear to be crazy. 

Until he adds a bit of context:  “When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”

It’s in the headlines every day: school teachers, school administrators, and school boards all over this great land are rushing headlong towards cliffs towering perilously above the hard, craggy rocks of misbegotten gender pronouns, pandemic-induced panic and polarity, and a whole generation of students that don’t even know which restroom they are supposed to use.

Though Lewis died the same day as JFK, six decades ago he predicted this day would come: “In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when ‘I’m as good as you’ has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers—or should I say, nurses?—will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”

Ouch.

But, just as Lewis foretold, our country’s current cultural condition was the inevitable product of teaching that abandoned truth. In the wake of our virtual veto of virtues vetted by veracity, we have commissioned a whole generation of students to believe that their base affections, emotions, and impulses are cause enough to abandon objective reality for whatever subjective truth they choose. Truth has become something that we create and is no longer something that is revealed.

Double ouch.

Not so in these classrooms, friend. Our deranged teachers revel in the revelation of John 14: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I marvel every day as I watch teachers tirelessly pursue Christ in their classrooms, using their respective content areas and core subjects to inspire our students to follow in the same way.  In the process, they’ve turned against the direction of the crowd, chosen not to “follow the science”, embrace gender chaos, or trade authentic evil for pretend peril.

Although last week was our Faculty and Staff Appreciation Week, would you consider finding the time to write a card, send an email, or swing by a classroom?  Would you thank our teachers for being nuts?  Truthfully, these lunatics deserve it.

Geoff Brown is the Superintendent of Northwest Christian School located in Phoenix, AZ. Northwest Christian School is one of the largest private Christian schools in the state of Arizona and the only ACSI Exemplary Accredited school in the state.

This post is sponsored by NCS Online. NCS Online is a fully online K-11th grade Christian school providing an online education that is rigorous, affordable, and rooted in Biblical worldview. To learn more about NCS Online, visit NCSonline.org.