by Joshua Gibbs

When one of my children reports at dinner, “Tommy did something dumb in class today,” my first question in response is, “What’s Tommy’s last name?” I want to put Tommy in context. Who are his parents? Who are his siblings? Where does he go to church? Given all the conversations I’ve had with his parents, all my interactions with his brothers, and all my interactions with the other people who go to his church, I want to see if it makes sense that Tommy did something dumb in class. Of course, I do the same thing if one of my children reports that Tommy did something remarkable in class.

Children have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that they come from somewhere, though. When they arrive at school, they tend to think of themselves as automatons lately sprung from the forehead of Zeus. They don’t think of themselves as representatives of their parents, or diplomats from their churches—even though the adults in their lives see them this way. When a child acts, an adult says, “Someone trained you to do this—either by telling you to do it, or not telling you not to do it.” The same is true of adults, though. When I hear an adult say something dumb, my first thought is, “Where do you go to church?”

When we understand ourselves in context, when we see ourselves in the light of connections that other people make, we feel those connections—those identities—as a burden. This is good, though, for the burden of identity moors us, and raises the standard to which we hold ourselves. A man who is proud of his country wants people of other countries to think highly of his country, so he elevates his behavior while on vacation. When I go to a potluck at someone else’s church, I bring a better bottle of wine than I’d bring to my own church. When we think highly of the institutions (family, church, nation) who have given us our identities, we want others to think highly of them, as well. Likewise, a teenager who has a broken relationship with his parents loses a significant source of motivation to do well in school.

While many kids forget they’re diplomats when they show up on campus in the morning, several years ago, I noticed there was one particular kind of student at classical Christian schools who tended to remember it: Catholics.

I would wager that the average classical Christian school is 97% Protestant. Nonetheless, in the miniscule enclave of Catholics, one often finds the most respected student in the school. I don’t mean that all the Catholic students are excellent, and yet I wonder: how many Classical Christian schools have awarded their top honors at the end of the year to a disproportionately high number of Catholics? Quite a few, I suspect.

Catholics are free to argue the reason for this owes to the superiority of their dogma and tradition, but that’s not what I’d chalk it up to, because I would also wager that at pious Catholic schools, Protestant minorities nab a disproportionately high number of honors at the end of the year. Why? Well, a Catholic minority at a largely Protestant school has constant reminders of his otherness, his diplomat status. He feels he is the representative of another world. He knows that when his teachers see him, they think, “There’s that Catholic boy,” and he wants to do his church proud.

And so I wondered: If more students felt the weight of their identity, would it help them grow in self-awareness?

With this in mind, I made my students name tags—my high school students, that is. I folded a single piece of cardstock into thirds (so it would stand up), put the student’s first name, last name, and church name on the middle third, and offered up the following explanation on the first day of class:

“There are three important pieces of information on this nametag: your first name, your last name, and your church name. Your first name is you and you’re uniquely responsible for the things you do. When you sin, you are held accountable for it. When you labor righteously for the Lord, you store up treasure in heaven. Good or bad, you are responsible for what you do.

However, you also came from somewhere. Someone raised you. Someone told you what was right and wrong. Someone trained you to act the way you do. I’m speaking of your parents, of course, which is why your last name is on the nametag, as well. No matter what you do in the classroom, good or bad, I assume you’re behaving in a manner which is consistent with how you’ve been raised. If you misbehave in the classroom, I adjust my impressions of your parents. The same is true if you behave like a gentleman in class.

Your parents come from somewhere, too. They came from their parents, but they also come from your church, and your church trains congregants how to live. As I observe how you and your parents act, I form an impression of your church. If I ask basic questions about the Bible—questions about Jesus’s parables, the Sermon on the Mount, the patriarchs—and I notice that students who go to a certain OPC church always know the answers, that informs my impression of their OPC church. The same is true if they never know the answers. I judge your parents and your church by how you act.

For all these reasons, when I call on you in class, I’m going to call on you using your full name and your church name. When you put up your hand, I’m going to say, ‘Tom Smith, Westminster OPC,’ or ‘Wendy Darling, St. Luke Episcopal.’ We all need constant reminders of who we are and what we represent. It’s my hope that these reminders will be both a comfort to you and a challenge. I hope they’re a challenge to set yourself a high standard so that people think well of your parents and your church—because you think highly of your parents and your church. And I hope it’s a comfort to remember your identity, to remember that people are looking after you because they care for you.

I should note that these aren’t ‘special rules’ which apply in this class and no other. I didn’t decide to judge you this way. I didn’t weigh my options and choose to think of you as diplomats of your families and your churches. This is simply how all adults make judgements about the world. Until you understand the way reasonable adults understand identity, the way they determine who they trust and what they value won’t make a lick of sense.

At the beginning of class, students unfold their name tags and set them out on their desks. At the end of the day, they fold them neatly into their books. Some come to me throughout the year when they move churches and I make them new nametags—and learning that a student has moved churches isn’t likely to come up any other way in class, even though it’s highly significant.

How does one evaluate the effectiveness of such a habit? It’s hard to say. I have no data to point at which suggests the nametags “work,” but I know they make a convenient object lesson when talking of standards, honor, and meaning. And I know that any public reminder of where I attend church—especially in mixed ecclesial company—makes me more apt to hold my head up, speak clearly, listen attentively, and not shoot my mouth off.