Faith and Skills: The Two Pillars of an Education Worth Having

By Joshua Sutcliffe

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There is a crisis in education. Not just in test scores or funding. Not merely in declining literacy or the chaos of behaviour. The deeper crisis is this: we have forgotten what education is for.

For decades we have treated schooling as a conveyor belt for credentials, a machine that produces “college-ready” young people who can pass exams, take on debt, and fill jobs that may not even exist in ten years. We have filled their heads with information while leaving their hearts and hands empty. The result is a generation that is anxious, directionless, and often unemployable in the real world — and, more tragically, spiritually malnourished.

I call for a bold return to classical Christian education while embracing the practical skills training essential for thriving in the modern world.

At the heart of the vision is a simple but radical claim:

Education can — and must — be broken down into two main categories: Faith and Skills.

Everything else is secondary. Every curriculum, every timetable, every pedagogical fad should be measured against these two pillars.

1. Skills: The Progressive Pathway to Competence

Young people develop. They are not blank slates or identical units of production. Their capacity, interests, and readiness change with age. Therefore the skills they learn must follow a clear, sequential progression — one that builds genuine competence rather than the illusion of it.

Here is the progression most students should follow:

1. Reading

The foundational skill. Without the ability to decode and comprehend text, every other door remains locked.

2. Writing

The ability to express clear thoughts in clear sentences. Writing is thinking made visible.

3. Numeracy

Not just arithmetic, but number sense, estimation, and the confidence to handle quantities in the real world.

4. Logic

The tools of clear reasoning: identifying fallacies, constructing arguments, distinguishing truth from error.

5. Debate

Logic under pressure. Learning to defend a position, listen carefully, and refine one’s thinking in the arena of ideas.

6. Public Speaking

The ability to stand before others and communicate with clarity, conviction, and presence.

Only once these foundational skills are secure do we move to the final stage:

7. Payable Skills

The practical, marketable abilities that allow a young man or woman to provide for a family, serve a community, and create value. These include:

- Business and entrepreneurship

- Media and content creation

- Personal finance and investing

- Risk assessment and decision-making

- Cooking and household management

- Trades (electrical, plumbing, carpentry, welding, etc.)

- And other high-value, real-world competencies

This is not vocational tracking in the old sense. It is wisdom. A young person who can read deeply, write persuasively, reason clearly, speak powerfully, and earn a living with their hands or mind is free. They cannot easily be controlled by algorithms, governments, or economic shocks. They have agency.

Notice that this progression is age- and interest-dependent. Not every student will move at the same pace. Some will discover an early passion for a trade. Others will go deeper into rhetoric or media. The pathway is ordered, but not rigid. The goal is competence, not conformity.

2. Faith: From Milk to Meat

If skills form the hands and the mind, faith forms the soul.

The Apostle Paul gives us the perfect metaphor for spiritual formation. In 1 Corinthians 3:2 he writes:

> “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready.”

And again in Hebrews 5:12–14:

> “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food… But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Christian education must follow this same progression — from milk to meat.

Milk is the elementary gospel: the story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Who God is. Who we are. What Christ has done. The simple, life-giving truths that every child can receive and every adult must never outgrow.

Meat is the deep things of God: systematic theology, biblical ethics, church history, apologetics, the hard sayings of Jesus, the wisdom literature, the prophetic books, the implications of the gospel for marriage, sexuality, work, politics, money, suffering, and culture. Meat is the training of the conscience and the affections so that a young person loves what God loves and hates what God hates.

Too many Christian schools and youth groups keep students on milk indefinitely. They offer endless emotional experiences, worship sets, and “Jesus loves you” messages, but never move them into the solid food of mature discipleship. The result is spiritual infants — easily tossed by every wind of doctrine, every cultural fad, every progressive ideology that contradicts Scripture.

Faith formation must be progressive, rigorous, and unapologetically biblical. We do not apologise for teaching that there is such a thing as objective truth, that God designed male and female, that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, that all of life is under the lordship of Christ. These are not “milk” issues. They are meat. And our children need them.

Why Both Matter — And Why Together They Produce Wisdom

Skills without faith produce competent pagans — clever, productive, and ultimately empty.

Faith without skills produces pious incompetence — sincere hearts that cannot provide, cannot lead, and cannot compete.

But faith and skills together produce something the world desperately needs: wise people.

People who know how to work hard and why work matters.

People who can speak persuasively and whose speech is seasoned with grace and truth.

People who can build businesses and build them for the glory of God rather than the glory of self.

People who can reason carefully and whose reason is captive to the Word of God.

This is the education I never had. It is the education I am determined to help rebuild.

A Call to the Next Generation (and Those Who Love Them)

Parents: stop outsourcing the formation of your children’s souls and competence to systems that do not share your values.

Teachers: recover the ancient craft of forming whole persons rather than processing units of data.

Pastors and church leaders: demand more than entertainment from your youth ministries.

Young people: refuse the soft bigotry of low expectations. Demand an education that will make you dangerous for the Kingdom of God — skilled with your hands, sharp with your mind, and deep in your soul.

I am building a movement. A reformation. A return to the ancient paths where the good way is, so that we may walk in it and find rest for our souls (Jeremiah 6:16).

Gaining wisdom leads to good decisions.

And good decisions, multiplied across a generation, can change the world.

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Joshua Sutcliffe is the teacher who was banned from classrooms for refusing to call a girl a boy. He is a husband, father, and lifelong advocate for classical Christian education and practical competence. Follow on X

@jj_sutcliffe

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If this vision resonates with you, share this post, join the conversation, and help us rebuild an education that is truly worth having.