Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil, is often credited with saying, “All politics is local.”

A simple truth, really, is that the most important of all elections are those of our city or township councils, mayors or supervisors, school and hospital boards, water/sewer, housing, city planning commissioners, district judges, even the local sheriff.

All of us fixed on making a global impact, through education, might do well to take the words of O’Neil to heart, and, profess that “all learning is local.”

Faith-based organizations, FBOs, insist that “we can change the world,” or, “stop poverty, defuse terrorism, bring hope, defeat despair,” and a host of other laudable but hard to substantiate claims.

Under the principle of “all education is local” we must confess “we” are not the ones who are going to change the world, end poverty, and all the rest.

Who then?

To paraphrase another politico, James Carville, running Bill Clinton’s bid for the White House, “It’s the economy, stupid.” We might say, “It’s the Children. Always was, always will be the children.”

The children. The students, or learners, school-age or not-yet-born, in existing or future schools, are the carriers and deliverers of this hope, transformation, prosperity, democratic leadership – “we” dream of and claim.

So, the challenge is this: “How child-focused are our endeavors?” “How will all that we do, actually reach and impact the child in the classroom, in the school, in the community?”

We talk “Christ-Centered” as a key definer of what is “true” Christian “schooling.”

The question remains, “Are we also Child-Focused?”

Some check points on the “Are we Child-Focused” scale might be:

1. Are the children getting good nutrition, to enhance their abilities to learn?
2. Are children drinking safe water which minimizes illness and absenteeism?
3. Do children have access to mosquito nets to cut down the n of malaria?
4. Are children safe, period? Are schools refuges against abuse and exploitation on due to gender, religion, or, even their HIV status?
5. Do children, with consent from parents/guardians, have access to HIV testing, immunizations, hearing and vision screening, all of which impact ability to learn?

I could go on…these are only a few of the most basic examples of “Child-Focused” schooling, let alone the academic, cognitive considerations.

The “uncomfortable truth” is many organizations focus “top-down” as change agents to those whom we trust will be, in turn, implementers of change for teachers and, eventually, children.

Meanwhile children are figuratively dying to access a seat in an affordable school, and/or physically dying for lack of access to the most basic health services, enough to attend school, to learn, and mature mentally and physically.

Top-Side approaches have their value, but, it matters not to a child or parent whether their teacher can afford to attend a conference, if they are too sick to learn.

The irony is that minivans filled with touring educators love to have photo ops with children in schools or orphanages, clinics, or, churches. They may even get to learn the child’s name who is sitting on their lap.

The story, and daily drama, behind that name, that face, that small frame of a child, is as much a mystery to the visitor as it is to wonder, “Why did God have me born in my country, and circumstance, instead of as this child, here?”

As we consider whether our Christian schools are, or should be more, “Christ-Centered” we cannot honestly probe of this dialogue, without coming face-to-face with this question:

“How can we promote Christ-Centered schooling, apart from insuring we are also Child-Focused?”

The challenge is: Can we commit to balancing value and resources to clean water as well as curriculum workshops? Mosquito nets as equally important as teacher mentoring? Immunizations as critical as new, instructional designs?

Could the international community dedicate a percentage of every registration to yet another global gathering of Christian educators toward a fund for insuring every child has “access” to these basic “living to learn” resources?

Could every visiting teacher, workshop facilitator, curriculum designer, volunteer work team, etc. also raise and dedicate a percentage to such a fund for nets, nutrition, or, water or immunizations?

Remember – transformation is local. It’s the children.

-Dale Dieleman, WWCS Field Director for Africa

Kampala, Uganda

GO! The message from Jesus for the church.

GO means get out and meet the people where they live. See who they are. Be among. Watch and learn.

We go - into Banda and see among the drinking shacks the children of the Tentmakers school.

We go - and find in the rural areas the villages with no school in sight. We see the roadside lined with children, smart in their uniforms, walking for kilometers to whatever school they can find.

We go - and we see, hear, and from a distant house comes loud mourning. Another family member dead. AIDS claims one more. Villagers start their way toward the house but stop just outside. For inside it is a private matter. And no one claims AIDS is the cause. It is always something, but, not AIDS.

We go - and we begin to see the gift of teaching in the heart and soul of one who knows this is not a job, but a calling. One who engages the children, games with them over math and spelling, sings the multiplication tables, and always a little story with every lesson.

“Let us all clap for Moses!” and the whole class cheers,as the young boy spells the word correctly on the pitted chalk board, with the stub of the clalk the teacher has left in her supply for the month.

“Cheer for Shiffa” says the teacher and immediately the room explodes with excitement, as loud as a rock concert, and the Shiffa stands to spell the new vocabulary for the day.

We go - and begin, only just begin, to learn, and not yet understand, the real schooling here, the truth of Christian education for a ground-floor worldview. The essence of the matter we professionals have lost far back in our first year in the classroom ourselves.

We go - and find it again. The soul of learning. The heart of teaching. The time when each day and each child were blessings, before the methodologies, pedagogies, and practiced lesson planning which were never truly followed anyway.

We go - we see. We who call ourselves educators, now again must become students, learners. Like Jesus who said we must be born again, and Nicodemus who wondered how can this happen. Before we think we can teach anything to any of our sisters and brothers here who teach from their souls, we must watch and learn, and perhaps better go back to from where we came, unless and until we can come close to what is achieved with so little.

We go - why?

Because it is a sin to say, “Come unto us, and let us teach you the ways you should teach”

We go - Where?

To the places God is showing us and revealing what true Christian education is in the flesh. To where we believe in our professional minds that it cannot be, but only because we are blind to see what is there before us.

We go - When?

Now, because we know the time is at hand. The days are few before all of Africa will be threatened with forces and religions whose sole agenda is to bury Christianity in the sand of the deserts or the red earth of the fertile regions.

We go - as Jesus went. We go and encourage and build up the sisters and brothers in the classroom, the aged grand mamas with their dead children’s children to care for.

We go because they cannot come, and if they did we would not find how it is, truly, and honestly, and, because we are called to go.

This is why we in Uganda are packing up our conference and taking it on the road rather than calling the few who could come to the big city - Kampala.

The sheer numbers are the rationale. Rather 500 or more coming from the countryside within one-day’s walk, than 50 affording the transport to the capitol. Rather we GO and by going, perhaps we discover we are the learners and they the hosts.

Dale Dieleman, WWCS Field Director for Africa
Writing from an internet cafe in Kampala, Uganda