The Purpose of Education

This is kind of a continuation of yesterday's post. It would have been too much to put it all together.

Excerpted from

A Christian Philosophy of Education

by Gordon Clark

We must ask ourselves what our goals are when educating our children.

"The end of learning" wrote John Milton "is to repair the ruin of our first parents

by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge

to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him.

If this be so - and the Bible says it is so - then the aim of American education

is all wrong." Gordon Clark explains in his book,

A Christian Philosophy of Education:

The purpose of education

is not to enable a student to earn a good income.

The purpose of education

is not to preserve our American system of government and political freedom.

The purpose of education is not

world unification.

The purpose of education

is not to teach young people a trade.

The purpose of education

is not to encourage the never-ending search for truth.

The purpose of education

is not to put the student in harmony with the cosmos.

The purpose of education

is not to raise the consciousness of the students and train them for world revolution.

The purpose of education

is not to prepare the student for productive careers.

The purpose of education

is not the social adjustment of the child.

The purpose of education

is not to stay ahead of the Russians or Japanese in technology.

The purpose of education

is not to create good citizens.

The purpose of education is far different, far more noble than any of these things. The purpose of education is to make Christian men [and women], transformed y the renewing of their minds after the image of Him who created them.