Christian Education in Chile: Is the Seventh-day Adventist System at Risk?

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2010

Abstract

Diverse perspectives with respect to Christian Education constitute a potential path for misunderstanding and contradictions; this study considers this situation in the context of a Seventh-day Adventist Christian system with students and parents from different religious perspectives in Chile. The parents=sponsors of the eighth graders were invited to participate in a survey that contained indicators related to social, academic, religious, and spiritual objectives of education in order to indicate the importance attributed to the objective and to evaluate the degree to which the participant saw the school's achievement of the objective. Among the parents=sponsor of the eighth grade students in the Adventist education system in Chile, most (N1/4433) gave priority that these objectives: the "student accepts Christ as his personal Savior", "cultivate[s] a daily communion with God", "learns to make appropriate decisions", and that the "Bible be the base of what is taught". There is an overall consensus in granting a moderate degree of importance to objectives of a student learning to "make appropriate decisions", "be academically competent like others in other schools", and "to practice sports." This ranking leaves in last place of importance, "that the teachers be Adventist". Fundamental philosophical importance has been ascribed to objectives such as having Adventist teachers in Adventist classrooms, practicing healthy lifestyle choices, and the importance of manual labor. However these basic objectives seem to be losing their value within the philosophical expectations of the parents=sponsors of eighth-grade students in the Chilean Union. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC and Andrews University.

Journal Title

Journal of Research on Christian Education

Volume

19

Issue

3

First Page

224

Last Page

239

DOI

10.1080/10656219.2010.525491

First Department

Graduate Psychology and Counseling

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