Tagged: accelerated christian education

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist


I have thought about this a lot. It is one of those words that the English have borrowed from the German, but which in its usual dictionary explanation does not express all that the word implies. Some words are just like that, aren’t they?

The dictionary definition of the term is; “the spirit of the time and general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time”.  Well yes, but the thing is when you go into the background of the word from a German perspective, it has many layers to it.  This is perhaps why we don’t have a good feel of its translation or its common English usage. The word in German carries the idea of being in a fog, so the ‘spirit of the age’ is not recognised by you or me, because we are so influenced, affected, controlled by, engulfed by, our eyes covered by the fog of the spirit of the age that we do not know there is such a spirit nor can we see any alternative.  From a German perspective you can only assess zeitgeist in retrospect; looking back or, better translated, the ghost of the past age.  Then we can see what it was and know where they went wrong or how they could have done better.  Hind sight is a wonderful thing.

Why Christian Education – History

Why Christian Education

History

Why Christian Education
History
We need to remember that Education was originally not a state or secular idea but rather one that those who are followers of Jesus thought Learning_alt_provisionof.  The invention of the so called Sunday school (1736 to 1811) was by Robert Rakes whose statute stands in such places as Victoria Embankment in London, Gloucester Town Centre and Queens Park Toronto On. Canada.

I say so called Sunday school because this was not as we often think of it today. What Robert Rakes was really doing was seeking to educate young people to read and write and do maths, and because Sunday was the only day that children in those days did not work it was, of course, called Sunday school.
By 1831, Sunday schools in Great Britain were teaching weekly 1,250,000 children, approximately 25 per cent of the population. One need to remember that there was at this time no such thing as ‘state education’ the gradual take over by the state probably began