Philosophy of education has also lost ground because all publicly funded tertiary institutions in South Africa have become secularised; they prefer not to officially attach themselves to any religious denomination or ethos (with the exception of the ethos of secular humanism, as has been argued by, amongst others, Van der Walt (2004; 2007:221ff.) and Tripp & Tripp (2008:15−19). There is nevertheless a need for guidance with respect to the upbringing of Christian children receiving their school education in a secular context which has been philosophically determined in South Africa by the Manifesto on Human Rights (Chapter 2, Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; Act 108 of 1996) and further expounded in the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (Ministry of Education 2001).

There is yet another reason for attempting to offer a more or less systematic overview of the main precepts of education from a stewardship perspective. Du Preez and Roux (2010:15, 19, 22, 23) found that the teacher-participants in their study remarked about the discrepancy between values taught at public school and those nurtured at home and in the community. This is why it will remain important to keep informing Christian educators about a Biblical stewardship approach to education.

Since neither a libertarian-postmodern approach nor its opposite, a moralistic approach as outlined above, can be condoned from a Christian pedagogical point of view, it is important to depart from a proper understanding of the essence of education or pedagogy in general. More than five decades ago, the Dutch educationst Langeveld (1959) wrote:

It is typical of the educator that his (or her) interaction with and guidance of, his/her protection as well as leading to independence of the educand² (literally: pupil), in brief, his/ her entire pedagogical behaviour, should be aimed at helping the child to come of age (to adulthood, independence, literally: ‘mondig worden’) and to equip him or her to independently fulfil his or her life-task. (pp. 27−28)

Van Rensburg, Landman and Bodenstein (1994) followed this up by defining education:

... as purposeful guidance that occurs within a normative and juridical framework, and that is characterised by communicative, dignified and non-discriminative actions such as giving support and transfer [of knowledge, skills and morals – author] by brave educators and learners that possess malleable potential. (p. 122)

Most definitions of education therefore embody the following notions: The educator should experience a calling towards attending to the needs of the young and less experienced. The educator should be competent for the task of attending to those pedagogical needs. The educator should practise wisdom in his or her interactions with the younger or less experienced person (the educand). He or she should contrive to make a disciple (follower) of the educand by setting a good moral example that may be voluntarily and freely emulated. He or she should allow the educand to develop and unfold his or her potential and enable him or her to discharge the various commissions of life, including a life-task (Van Dyk 2003:156; Van Dyk 2000:65−66).

As the etymology of the term ‘pedagogy’ (agein) suggests, education entails the leading or guiding of the educand in a desired direction, in terms of a certain value system, a particular life view and even religious or spiritual commitment. This concept is similarly reflected in the Latin educare, literally translated as ‘to bring forth’ or to ‘lead forth’ (Peck 2006:240). Discipling (i.e. making a follower) and disciplining suggests that the educator should take the responsibility for guiding or leading the young person in a direction that the educator herself would find appropriate for her own life and future. Educating people, particularly stewardship education, does not mean to indoctrinate the educand but rather to help him or her to lead a suitable or appropriate life; it is brought forth from his or her unconscious to his or her awareness. The educand is not only perceived but also treated (guided, led) as the possessor and the processor of his or her knowledge (Peck 2006:240–241).

Education furthermore embodies sub-structures such as enabling, guiding and equipping the educand (Van Dyk 2003:155−158). The educand must be enabled to meet the requirements of her or his calling or tasks as a future adult. She or he must be equipped with the necessary skills for that calling or task. The educand requires a long period of nurture and, according to Parekh (2000:145), cannot grow into a sane adult without a stable, loving and stimulating environment and a sense of belonging and rootedness. The educand needs to acquire certain basic capabilities and skills in order to hold the self together, to make sense of his or her life (see discussion of the microcosmic map, world and life view below), to establish civil and moral relationships with others, to find his or her way around in the wider society and to take many decisions and reflect on actions (see discussion of the ‘examined life’ below). Thanks to the unique capacities of each educand, they create a world of meaning and values, thereby not only enriching the world but, most importantly, creating a new world of their own.

The term ‘stewardship’ literally means to take care of something entrusted to one, to manage another’s estate or property, the charge committed to one. We have been given stewardship over our time, energy, talents, values, feelings, behaviour, money and all other things (Cloud & Townsend 1992:73). In pedagogical context, children and their upbringing are somehow deemed to have been entrusted to their educators. Christians feel themselves entrusted with this duty by the personal triune God who has revealed himself in the Bible. This conviction is rooted in the Creation or Great Mandate (Gn 1:28).⁴

The objective of the Christian educator is not simply to ensure that the educand does not become a criminal or that he or she ‘does well’ or leads the good life. Rather, the educator’s desire is that the educand should love the Lord his or her God with all soul, heart and mind and love others as he or she would love the self. To achieve this objective, Christian stewardship education should be rooted in Scripture and not in any other source. Christian educators have the divinely appointed task to command God’s works to the next generation (Ps 145:4). They have to proclaim God’s truth and not secular or their own ideas (Dt 32:46−7). The goal of formative stewardship instruction from a Biblical perspective, according to Tripp and Tripp (2008:37), ‘is that we and our children and our grandchildren may fear the Lord and walk in his ways, enjoying a long life’. God designed people, including the educand, to worship. The only question is: What will they worship? If the educand is not guided to learn to worship God, he or she does not cease to worship. They simply worship something other than God (Rm 1:21−23, 25) and in doing so become secularised. According to Tripp and Tripp (2008:95), the heart of the educand then becomes the shrine where idols are worshiped (Eph 5:5; Col 3:5). Since the heart is the well-spring of the educand’s life (Pr 4:23), educators should concentrate less on external behaviour and more on preventing a ‘straying heart’ (Tripp 2005:xi).

the divine King (has) ordained that the human race would be his royal image. Put simply, the expression ‘image of God’ designated human beings as representatives of the supreme King of the universe. (p. 8)

This expression highlights two sides of human existence: people’s humility as well as their dignity (Pratt 1993:8). Their humility lies in the fact that they are human, not divine, and their dignity lies in the fact that they have, as Pratt (1993:19) says, ‘a wonderful job description: to fill the world with other images of God and to rule over creation as his vice-regents’. ‘Dignity’ is an aristocratic or hierarchical concept in the sense that it describes a status and only makes sense in relation to what is judged inferior (for example, a stone). People have dignity because they have capacities which non-humans do not have and which people consider so significant as to make them the basis of an appropriate moral practice (Parekh 2000:146−7). A Judaeo-Christian view emphasises the shared fatherhood of God for all people and the fundamental importance of the creation of human beings as members of one family and as individuals of personal worth. In Christianity, Jesus taught the value of all human beings in the sight of God and advocated love as well as charity, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger and caring for the oppressed (Ramcharan 2008:15).

Because of the dignity of the educand, the educator should cherish the latter’s sense of self-worth, value his or her individual and collective achievements, encourage them to develop and express their human capacities, and help create conditions in which they can lead worthy and meaningful lives (Parekh 2000:148). Based on the concept of human dignity, every individual should enjoy equal opportunity to develop his or her potential (Ramcharan 2008:55).

The shepherding process is a richer interaction than telling your child what to do and think. It involves investing your life in your child in open and honest communication that unfolds the meaning and purpose of life. It is not direction, but direction in which there is self-disclosure and sharing. Values and spiritual vitality are not simply taught, but caught. … [Educators] must … actively shepherd the Godward orientation of [their] children. In all of this, the educator must pray that God will work in and around [his or her] efforts and the responses of [his or her] children to make them people who know and honour God. (pp. xxi, 25)

The educand should not only learn to know the Giver of his or her potential and gifts but also how to become accountable with regard to how those gifts are used and unfolded. As Hollick (2006:355) rightly remarked, all people come into this world with an innate sense of stewardship, as evidenced by the question: ‘Who am I, and why am I here?’ The educand needs instruction as part of the shepherding of his or her heart. The instruction not only informs the mind, it is directed to persuading the heart of the wisdom and the truth of God’s ways. Impression of the truth on the heart of the educand, say Tripp and Tripp (2008:15), is not to control or manage him or her, but to point them to the greatest joy and happiness they can experience, namely to delight in God and the goodness of his ways.

Writing from a psychological perspective, Peck (2006:4) draws attention to the importance of spiritual growth for pre-empting mental illness. Educators have to find the means to ensure mental and spiritual growth in the educand (Fowler 1987):

By this I mean let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved.

It makes sense for educators to distinguish and individualize between educands because of differences in the quantity and degree of gifts that they each have been endowed with. The educator should acknowledge and respect the place and unique contribution of each educand. Each one of them has something unique to contribute, not necessarily at the intellectual, academic or scientific level expected from them in the school context. The educator is therefore charged with the task of trying to discover what the unique contribution of each educand could be, attach value to it, develop it further and help the educand apply those gifts in the interest of the entire community. (p. 207)

According to a stewardship approach, educators realise that each educand has a separate and unique moral understanding, which at first may be quite unsophisticated but may develop to more mature levels. Whilst therefore refraining from imposing his or her moral standards on⁵ the educand, the educator will facilitate decision-making by opening all the possibilities for the educand and examining all of them with the educand. This approach also applies to the educand’s development of a personal life view. The educator never indoctrinates the educand or coerces him or her to adopt certain views but rather guides the educand in the process of developing a life view in terms of which the latter can figure out for herself who she is, what her task in life is, how she should learn and master knowledge and to whom she should be accountable and responsible (Edlin 1999:127).

Stewardship furthermore implies taking care of the child and also of his or her education. By nature, human beings take care of things entrusted to them, including property, their bodies, their jobs and income, their spouses and so on. Christian educators take loving care of what has been entrusted to them (in casu the child and its education) because they feel themselves driven by inner motives based on their religious commitment. A steward feels herself or himself committed to the task and therefore experiences a deep sense of responsibility towards the charge-giver. In a play on words, Lategan (2011:87) contends that ‘response-ability’ embodies notions such as the idea that someone or something will not be used for personal gain, that the creation and maintenance of relations will be to the benefit of the other and for the purpose of protecting him or her from harm. Stewardship education furthermore consists of caring, loving, developing, nurturing, maintaining and protecting the child in all respects of his or her personhood. Stewardship is aimed at improving the wellbeing of the other, in this case, the educand.

is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. [...] these tools are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also to grow. (pp. 5−6)

As human beings grow in discipline, love and life experience, their understanding of the world and their place in it naturally grows apace (and vice versa). Education in the form of cultural contact is important for this growth. The educand tends to believe what the people around him or her believe, and he or she tends to accept as truth what these people tell them of the nature of the world as they listen to them during their formative years (Peck 2006:177).

Clearly, Peck is here echoing the Socratic dictum that the unexamined life (and world view) is not worth living. One’s view of life should be the result of close and critical examination, which may even include a unique confrontation with the (God of the) Bible and with all the hand-me-down beliefs and assumptions that have been passed on by the previous generation. On Peck’s account, stewardship education also entails encouraging the educand to live the examined life.

The epitome of care in education is helping students grow, not by imposing the will of society on them⁷, but rather allowing the direction of growth to be determined by what is relevant to the individual student. (p. 187)

There is one arena in which we spontaneously favour moralistic intervention over neutrality, an arena which for many of us dominates our practical lives and dwarfs all other concerns in terms of its value: the business of raising our children. […] Faced with the same two questions which so trouble libertarian theorists in the political sphere – ‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ and ‘How do you know what is right?’ – parents have little difficulty at arriving at workable answers; … [they even] set forth in exhaustive detail the specific behaviours they expect from, and will reward in their children. (p. 74)

The second meaning is more appropriate in a stewardship context, namely to ‘live in accordance with moral principles’ (Sinclair 1999:959). This explains why, in the discussion above, expressions were used such as educators should follow ‘an appropriate moral practice’, ‘set a good moral example’, have been entrusted with the task of facilitating ‘appropriate moral decision making’ and that each person ‘has a unique moral understanding’ which should be cultivated.

The second meaning ties in with the problem of individualism. The capabilities approach of Nussbaum (2001) and Sen (2009) was also suspected of being too individualistic in the sense that it did not consider individuals as part of their social environment, as socially embedded and connected to others. It was thought that their approach worked with a notion of atomised individuals (Robeyns 2005:n.p.). To assess the possible critique that the stewardship approach expounded above might have been individualistic, we must distinguish between ethical individualism, ontological individualism and methodological or explanatory individualism. Ethical individualism postulates that individuals, and only individuals, are the units of moral concern. In other words, when evaluating different states of social affairs, we are only interested in the (direct and indirect) effects of those states on individuals. Ontological individualism, on the other hand, states that only individuals and their properties exist and that all social entities and properties can be identified by reducing them to individuals and their properties (Robeyns 2005:n.p.).

Neither of these forms of individualism was ad rem to the discussion of stewardship in the previous section. Claims about personal and individual stewardship were constantly off-set and counter-balanced with claims about social responsibility. There was, for instance, emphasis on the second half of the Great Commandment, the fatherhood of God for all people, individuals as members of the entire human family, the equal worth of all people, the importance of collective achievement, accountability to others for the use of personal gifts, the importance of contributing to the collective, the application of gifts in the interest of the entire community, the avoidance of personal gain at the cost of others, education as a form of cultural and trans-cultural contact, the role of educators and other important persons in the community, and so on.

Methodological or explanatory individualism was used for explaining stewardship education in the previous section. This is the view that something, in this case stewardship education, can be best explained by focusing on individuals and their properties, one of which, as noted above, is that the human being is also a social, communal being (Robeyns 2005:n.p.). A careful reading of the previous section will show that the necessary attention was given throughout to the relations between societal structures and entities, on the one hand, and individuals, on the other hand, as well as to the constraints and opportunities related to these structures and entities. The discussion mentions relations and processes that are profoundly social and collective. Individuals are social beings; their existence and properties can therefore not be discussed in isolated terms. The options that a person has in the process of attaining personal stewardship depend greatly on relations with others and how they practise their stewardship mandate towards the individuals in their care.

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3.The method of filling ‘thin’ value statements with ‘thick’ life conceptual meaning should not be confused with the transformation (appropriation, rehabilitation or revision) of secular views which is the last phase of transcendental criticism.

4.For a detailed discussion of the pedagogical meaning of the Great Mandate, refer to Van Brummelen (1994:26−31).

7.See footnote 6.