189 Preliminary WCD Reception at Driestar Christian University 5 All of the students agree that an educational approach such as WCD should be integrated into DCU’s curriculum. The reason for this unanimous agreement is twofold. First, each of the students is convinced that WCD fits with Christian education. Second, they underline the belief that WCD would be especially helpful and perhaps even necessary in an environment of ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Regarding the first reason—the similarity between WCD and Christian education—the students observe the following: St6: I think that it fits with all types of education but especially well with Christian education, because Christian education does already have an eye on spiritual things. Just things like the heart or how one lives, things that go well or go wrong, that have to do with, for example, one’s moral life; and that fits to WCD, to one’s identity. St3: In Christian education, when you do it well, you talk with students about the fact that grades, indeed, are not everything, but that there’s more: that there is God, the whole Christian world. So, you already work towards a future that brings more. With WCD, you can express that stronger. St1: Yes, the goal is different, much broader, in Christian education. It is not about bringing them finally to a high position in society or something like that, but that you really come to your goal as a human being. St4: Your starting point at a Christian school has many interfaces with WCD (…) St2: In the world, in non-Christian education, you would call it citizenship formation, but the New Testament gives us, in this sense, much of our citizenship formation. St5, however, offers the more critical remark that WCD also needs to be purposefully combined with and corrected by Christian pedagogy. As an example, this student mentions that WCD seems to focus on achieving the maximum personal growth of the child, whereas Christian pedagogy underlines the central goal of serving God. Other students (St6 and St2) underline this observation, with St2 explicitly calling this a less individualistic focus. In response to the interviewer asking whether they see WCD in some way as ‘floaty and not really goal oriented’, they respond as follows: St5: Not floaty, but if you only want the child to come to maximum development, then I think that it does not really fit with Christian education. In fact, Christian education somehow has another, a higher goal. Maximum development cannot be the only thing to want.
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