I have a post on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog today that discusses a recent survey comparing Protestant Christian schools to their Catholic, public, homeschooling, and private non-religious peers. As someone who attended a private non-religious boarding school, worked for a parachurch ministry with independent schools, and who is now married to a teacher in one of these schools, I had the chance to interview some colleagues who are in leadership in some of these schools about the survey. I wrote:
My husband and I live on the campus of a boarding school. The school has been in existence for two hundred years, though it has changed dramatically over the course of those years. It was once all boys but now embraces co-education. It was once a bastion of white male Protestants on their way to Ivy League colleges. It now attracts students from all over the country and all over the world. It was once affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. Now students are required to attend "chapel" six times each year, and they can fulfill the requirement by attending a Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu service, by taking part in a Zen meditation or participating in a spiritually centered yoga class. This school is a member of the NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools, along with about 1200 other schools in the United States. They make up a disproportionately small number of the schools and students in the nation, and yet students from these schools go on to positions of leadership within every area of American culture.
The recent Cardus Education Survey contrasts "Protestant Christian" schools and "Private Non-Religious Schools," a category which would include most of the schools within the NAIS even though many of these schools are either associated historically with a Christian denomination and/or have a multi-faith approach to religious education on campus. The purpose of the Cardus survey was to assess the educational options for children of Christian parents based upon the likelihood that the school in question would offer students spiritual formation, cultural engagement, and academic development.
