190 Chapter 5 St6: Yes, maximum happiness is the only thing you want, but eternal happiness. St5: Yeah… eternal happiness. I think more in terms of a child coming to its destination (…) St2: The focus can really be on the child and all aspects of its being, and that you want to develop that to the max. But I don’t think that is what Christian faith is about. Not in the sense that the child, from early childhood, gets a focus on itself, like: in all aspects I have to be as good as I can and prove myself. In that case, you really teach them to be individualistic: I am important. That is just not what Christian belief tells us. With regard to the second reason the six students believe that a WCD approach fits with Christian pedagogy in general—namely, that WCD is helpful or and even necessary in a context of high ethnic and religious pluralism—several students (St1, St2, St5 and St6) underline the importance of a good cognitive focus in education, of core subjects such as grammar and mathematics. However, they then move from there to the specific questions that a context of high diversity and complexity present for teachers in primary education. A close reading of the transcript reveals how they address the question of the teacher’s responsibility where greater diversity in the sociocultural preconditions of children, when they arrive in the classroom, can be observed. From there, they start rethinking the position of schools and teachers within the broader educational partnership with family, state/society and church, speaking of a gap that asks for the teacher’s engagement: St2: But it is still true that all together we focus a lot on the cognitive. St5: Yes, and I think that education has to focus itself. There are so many others aspects that should be addressed at home. School is, in fact, an institution where you have to learn to read and calculate; overall, so to say. But all together we may be going a little overboard. St6: Well, there is a gap. Because what we should do at home is not happening. So, who then solves it? When you want to do so at school, yes, then you have to replace that cognitive focus a little. But when you want to close the gap, then you may be looking first: well, educators, what are we going to do with that? (…) St1: It may vary really from school to school. That gap may be bigger at your school, where you see that all sorts of things in the upbringing at home are missing, whereas when you come to a Reformed school, you notice that children, most of the times, rely on a safe environment at home, with good social skills… Of course, you cannot generalise that, but there are, I think,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw