The Importance of Picking Up

“Confession of sin, keeping short accounts, is therefore essential to the spiritual health of a school community. After all, for an average-size school, three hundred sinners spend five days a week together there, for eight hours a day for nine months. If such a school had no janitor, just imagine what the bathrooms would look like after three days. What about the halls? In the same way, because the importance of confession of sin is neglected, many schools operate without any spiritual janitor. Everybody makes a mess, but nobody picks up. When this condition becomes part of the culture of the school, with niggling sins left lying about, a day of reckoning comes when the place blows up — the headmaster runs off with the secretary, and everyone is flummoxed. ‘How could this happen? This is a Christian school'” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 172).