"But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge..."

2 Peter 1:5 (NKJV

The Fourth School exists to glorify God in all that we do by partnering with Christian parents and the Church to equip young men and women in the vital areas of faith, virtue, and knowledge to impact the greater Washington D.C. area for Jesus Christ.

Mission Statement

The mission of The Fourth School is to pass on the best of our cultural inheritance to our covenant children in the light of a reformed Christian worldview so that all students may know and pursue what is good, true, and beautiful.

Through this pursuit, our graduates will be able to understand, evaluate, and transform their world under the lordship of Christ by contributing thoughtfully and responsibly to family life, to the church's life and mission, and to the political and cultural life of the general society, all to the glory of God.

Church Affiliation

The school is a ministry of Fourth Presbyterian Church, a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) denomination, in Bethesda, Maryland.  The school is governed by an independent board of directors elected by the Session of Fourth Presbyterian Church.

Learn more about the EPC's Essentials of Faith »

Philosophy of Education

Rooted in the knowledge of God and His world, The Fourth Presbyterian School educates covenant children in the best of our cultural inheritance so that they learn to discern and love what is good, true, and beautiful, while cultivating a lifelong pursuit of faith, virtue, and knowledge in all areas of life.

1. God

• Students are taught to aspire to what is good, true and beautiful. These find their perfection in God who has revealed Himself in creation and, supremely, in His Word.
• God is revealed in creation and history (general revelation), but more distinctly and clearly in Scripture (special revelation). Special revelation serves as spectacles through which we read with greater clarity God's revelation in history and creation.
• God's revelation in creation and history opens all legitimate areas of knowledge to investigation in the educational setting, teaching that all truth is God's truth while recognizing the limitations of understanding by finite, sinful creatures.
• The capstone of God's general revelation is humankind, creatures made in His image with the gifts of language, reason, conscience and imagination. Thus, we cherish the greatest achievements in the humanities as reflecting what God is like.
• The centrality of God's Word in His revelation to us informs the pedagogical emphasis we put on the study of language and literature, reading and writing, believing general humanities based education provides the fecund foundation necessary for lifelong educational growth.

2. Student

• As God's image bearers, students are precious to God, reflect His glory, and are endowed with astounding gifts to be cultivated for faithful living and lifelong learning in the kingdom of God.
  
• God places them first in families under the authority of parents, and also in the covenant family of the Church, who together commend to the school the call to impress upon students the Christian faith in the full breadth of its implications for all of life.
• All students are capable of learning and thrive when given the best of our cultural inheritance by loving, highly competent teachers who instruct within personal relationship.
• Teachers must be free to bring students to understanding through a variety of methods which fit established modes of learning, including memorization, while remaining attentive to developmental appropriateness.
• Within a general education founded on the basic biblical teachings of creation, fall, and redemption, students thrive first and foremost in learning how to read with understanding. This places good books, poetry, and language at the center of the curriculum, which inspire the imagination and cultivate the intellectual skill necessary for an enduring, fruitful education.
• The end of education for each student is wisdom, or truth in action, made manifest in a life lived for the kingdom of God and the good of culture.
  

3. Culture

• Though culture, like all things in creation, is touched by the fall, it is a significant vehicle through which the good, true, and beautiful are impressed upon the student.
• The family is ordained by God as the primary institution for transmitting culture, and the school is a means by which parents may fulfill their responsibility of passing on the best of their cultural tradition.
• The most praiseworthy achievements of the western cultural tradition, rooted in Greek and biblical cultures, fostered throughout the centuries of the Christian West, and reaching pinnacle in the Christian humanism of the Reformation period, continue, through disciplined study, to breath new cultural life in the present.
• As the best of our cultural inheritance is increasingly mastered by students, they will be able to understand.

Click here to view the school's unabridged Philosophy of Education.