The Purpose of Education
          
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 by the renewing of their minds after the image of Him who created them."
   

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Used with permission (and much gratitude)

Family Christian Academy.