A responsibility theory of education means that all areas of the curriculum should emphasize learning to take responsibility for the earth and for the creatures on that earth. It means that students should be instructed in ways that will ensure that they take responsibility for their own learning and for the learning, care, and nurture of others. That is what we call servanthood.

One dictionary definition of servanthood is "the state of being ardently devoted to another person or to a cause." If our students are to learn this kind of servanthood, then they must learn to be ardently devoted to the needs of people here on earth and to the environment which we inhabit. Tony Campolo once said that the kingdom can't come unless there are kingdom people serving others and acting like Jesus would act. There is joy in responding to the needs of those who hurt. There is joy in caring for our planet. Christian young people need to come to know that joy. Just as we arrange for them to get the cognitive knowledge and basic skills that are needed to care for the earth, so must we arrange for them to come to know the joy of serving others. God wants to do his work through us, his people, and our students must know that.

Is this kind of learning the task of the Christian middle school? In recent times it has been suggested that the learning of character and of concern for others is the task of the church and of the home. The school's task has been seen as stressing cognitive abilities. Noddings suggests that "our forebears were right in establishing the education of a moral people as the primary aim of schooling, but they were often shortsighted and arrogant in their description of what it means to be moral" (p. 2 18).

I am suggesting that we must stop separating cognitive learning from the learning of discipleship because the two go together. While learning discipleship is the task of the home and the church, it is also very much the task of every level of the Christian school. By the time students reach high school, many of their attitudes toward others have been formed in a very self-centered way. The typical middle school student is convinced that he or she is the center of a small universe of family and school.

We may not allow our students to develop sinful attitudes toward others by explaining that "they are at the early adolescent stage." Rather, we must arrange instruction, which will move students away from sinful attitudes and toward lives of service. But discipleship cannot be learned only by talking and listening. Discipleship must be learned by doing.

If it is true that students in middle school need to learn discipleship while they are in school, how can the school go about teaching discipleship? What kind of plan can be used?

Some school arrangements for teaching discipleship have already been touched on in earlier chapters. For example, in all areas of the curriculum the emphasis should be on the students' responsibility to help one another learn rather than pitting their talents against each other in competition. Instructional strategies especially designed for such cooperative efforts must be an important part of the curriculum. That is teaching for discipleship.

In addition, students who are at promise in specific academic areas must be given individual opportunities to move forward at their own pace but must also be expected to set aside time for helping fellow students who are struggling. That is teaching for discipleship.

And if students who are at promise in the area of athletics assume the responsibility for helping those who struggle, that, too, is teaching for discipleship.

In fact, we cannot actually teach discipleship. That would be teaching changed attitudes, and only the Holy Spirit can go into the hearts of our young people and renew them and change their attitudes. Our task is to arrange a curriculum and ways of instructing to make it more possible for such changes in attitudes to occur.

We have a great deal of information from sociological research that suggests that the most effective way to get people's attitudes to change is to arrange and require a change in actions. We should arrange certain kinds of action for our middle school students in order to encourage a change in their attitudes and understandings.

For example, a number of schools have arranged the curriculum so that students will study the effects of waste disposal on the environment. They visit waste management sites, discuss the problems with different kinds of waste products, talk with government officials about the problems and possible solutions, and spend time cleaning up beaches, parks, or other areas where garbage is often tossed. At school they separate the garbage into appropriate containers for disposal and are encouraged to do so at home. These activities help them understand how Christians can respond to the mandate to care for creation.

In Chapter 4 it was suggested that somewhere in the middle school a focal point of the curriculum should be a helping relationship which each student will develop with one other individual who is in need. For example, in the middle of the week, during school time, every student will spend an hour and a half either with an elderly person In a rest home, or with children in a daycare center, or with a mentally or physically handicapped person, or with a younger child who has learning difficulties.

In an excellent monograph called Educating for Responsible Service (1989) Joan Stob makes a number of Interesting suggestions about the need to cultivate the tendency to serve and ways to structure the classroom for service.

But how can such experiences be arranged? The school day is already full, so how can time be found for servanthood activities? Among the guidelines for planning a middle school is the suggestion that the administrator arranges a 90-minute planning period each week. During this planning period the teachers will meet to arrange for the integration which is required. One possibility is to have this meeting during the last hour and a half of the school day on Wednesdays. At the same time, the students will participate in their individual service activities, with transportation and supervision provided by parent volunteers.

A coordinator of activities would be appointed and then the teachers would give the coordinator the list of placements and the students' names. The coordinator would contact parents who might volunteer their services for transportation.

I am aware that finding volunteer help can be difficult. But such difficulties can be worked out. For example, in one school parents who could not volunteer to take their turns with needed work, were

asked to make a contribution in order to hire someone else to do it. Above all, the coordination should not be given to a teacher or administrator who already has his or her hands full with other tasks.

Can such a program work? Are any schools trying it? It seems as if most of the programs that presently exist are at the high school level. The problem is that if we wait that long, student attitudes will already have been established. Attitudes of sympathy and concern for others need to be developed while the students are still at the transescent stage. That is why we need to move these learning activites into the middle school.

When I have asked at schools having a service component, "Do your teachers plan instruction so that service activities are integrated with the rest of the curriculum?" the usual response was, "Not really. However, the topic does come up from time to time in other classes." It seems to me that schools that take the adventuresome, brave step of requiring service of their students miss out on a wonderful opportunity if they do not integrate the learning from those activities with the other areas of the curriculum.

If the service activity stands by itself, it will be a valuable activity and students will learn to empathize with others. But there is much that they cannot possibly learn without a teacher to arrange for specific kinds of learning.

1. They will not learn how the financial needs of an individual or a family are either helped or hurt by actions of the rest of society.
2. They will not learn the good and bad effects of government programs on the lives of those in need.
3. They will not learn which government agencies can be of help to people and in what areas government agencies do not help.
4. They will not have an opportunity to talk about their helping situation, to share their feelings and concerns with others. This sharing intensifies learning and helps students internalize it.
5. Without follow-up instruction the teacher may never know what inappropriate learnings or attitudes are occurring.

As an example of how all of this might work, take an eighth grade class in which the students have been involved with helping elderly people. They have visited them in their homes, cleaning sidewalks or

washing windows when needed. They have visited some of them in a rest home, reading to them or playing games with them. Stephen Tchudi and Margie Huerta (1983) describe how a group of Michigan teachers explored the topic of the elderly from as many different points of view and from as many different interdisciplinary perspectives as possible, in order to determine whether it was possible to find worthwhile activities for integration. Here are some of their suggestions along with some of my own. (This is not an integrated unit, but these are activities that might be part of such a unit.)

• How old do various animals live to be? Which animal has the longest lifespan? Which one has the briefest lifespan? Prepare a chart or display showing these relative lifespans.
• What happens to cells when they grow old? Why don't we continue to grow new cells forever? Read about the aging of cells or conduct experiments and present your findings.
• Do you share any of your grandparents' personality or physical traits? Interview your parents and study family photographs to discover resemblances. How do these come about? Prepare a photo-display to prove your points.
• Read about or interview a doctor on lifelong eating habits. What does your eating style determine about the length of your life?
• What can you find out about the effects of aging on intelligence or mental processes? Present your findings in a written or oral report.

• How many people are alive on earth now? How old are they? Design a world map showing population centers and the approximate percentages of people in various age brackets.
• Trace the increasing average life expectancy in the United States or Canada from colonial times to the present. Prepare a display or a talk showing what has happened. What does science/mathematics project to be the average lifespan 50 or 100 years from now?
• Formulate a year's budget for a person over 65 taking into account social security benefits. How difficult is it for an elderly person to get along financially in retirement?
• Explore the statistics on food production in the world today. Where does the world's food come from? Who consumes the most food? Who eats the least amount? Prepare the copy for a television or radio program that explores some of the problems of world hunger.

• Study photographs of elderly people. What did the camera "see" in these people? Translate your impressions into words. Or take your own pictures of other elderly people.

• Read the biographies and autobiographies of artists who were still creating late in life: Picasso, Casals, Toscanini, O'Keeffe, Nevelson. What kept them going? Prepare a class presentation on some of these artists.

• Study the ways in which the elderly are portrayed in paintings. What clues does a painter provide to show that a person is old? Then take some photographs of older people. Are the artists correct?

• Find an elderly person who has very interesting, wrinkled skin. (This person should also be very pleased about those wrinkles.) Ask him or her to come in for a sitting so that the class may sketch portraits.

• Prepare a report on the various social care programs for the elderly. Write an editorial on the subject.

• Investigate how different countries and cultures take care of the elderly. Then prepare an evaluation of such care in this country.
• Write an imaginary scene between a person who is about to enter a home for the elderly and his or her son or daughter How does the elderly person feel? How does the child feel?
• Find out if there is an adopt -a-grandparent program in your community and begin corresponding with a person in a home for the elderly.

• Research the American Indian treatment of their elderly and write a report for the class.
• Visit a home for the elderly and conduct a series of interviews with residents about what life was like during their youth. Use this information to compile a study of a period in twentieth century history.
• Put yourself in the role of a person who lived in an earlier era and have him or her visit our society today. What would, say, Eleanor or Franklin Roosevelt think about the modern-day U.S. or Canada? What would George Washington think? Present this as a dramatic monologue for the class. Locate an elderly person who is practicing a dying art or craft. Ask the person to teach you the basics of the craft. Use the ideas in an article, perhaps with photographs.

• Research the history of the Gray Panthers, a group of advocates for the elderly, and describe their plans or programs.
• Invite a government official to speak to the class describing current legislative proposals concerning the elderly.
• Write questions for the legislator to answer, and after the program write letters to him or her describing your position on the proposed laws.

• Do you think the elderly should have a right to die when they wish? Study the question and write a pro and con discussion, airing both sides of the issue. Then describe your own position, (Or study the subject of euthanasia and write a similar paper.)
• Research the laws and regulations concerning the establishment of homes for the elderly. What kinds of permits and credentials are required? Analyze these requirements. How do these rules and regulations protect the elderly?

• Learn about careers for the elderly and write a guidebook that would be helpful to an older person about to retire, in finding something interesting and worthwhile to do.
• Look into careers that involve the elderly: becoming a gerontologist, running a community recreation center, being a nurse in a rest home or nursing home, and so forth. Prepare a display showing these career choices and giving their qualifications.
• Interview an elderly person, perhaps one of your grandparents, on his or her feelings about working, (You might want to read parts of Working by Studs Turkel, first.) How do people feel about various kinds of work after spending a lifetime in such activity?
• What is "lifelong education?" Where does one get it? What is important about it? Can you see yourself being involved in lifelong education after you have finished school or college?

• Using the concordance, find biblical references to aging or to the elderly. Make a display or poster of these references.

• Find characters in the Bible who have lived into very old age and who have been influential in their old age, either in a good sense or in a bad sense.

• Interview elderly people to find out what they believe about life and death. How have their attitudes changed as they have grown older?

• Write a booklet describing various sports and other athletic activities that the elderly can enjoy.

• Make a display of the kinds of aerobic activities the elderly can do.

This is only a partial list of the suggestions these teachers compiled. The point is that with any topic it is possible to find excellent instructional activities for integrating the experience with the rest of the cur-

riculum in ways that will be extremely beneficial to your students.

In order for students to learn to have the tendency for taking responsibility for those in need, they need to have practice in caring. This practice in caring should take place in the classroom with the use of instructional strategies especially arranged for that purpose. But this practice in caring should also take place in the community. The object is to develop an ethos of caring through modeling, dialogue, and practice.

1. Is it valuable or worthwhile for your school to arrange Instruction so that the students will be actively engaged in service activities?
2. What kinds of service activities could the students in your school do? Are there agencies with which you could work? Should the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders all do the same things, or should there be a step-by-step program?
3. What form should this kind of curriculum take? Should the serving activities be done during school or outside of school? If they are done during school, how can the program be arranged and who will coordinate it? If it is done outside of school, how will you keep track of what is being done and who will coordinate it?