What is the Proper Goal of Education?

Some wonderfully incisive thoughts from our school chaplain, Pastor Randy Booth:

What is the Proper Goal of Education?

Is the proper goal of education to insure a good job and income for adult life, or, is man’s chief end to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and loose his own soul?”

The child is created in the image of God. To remove this central fact from the child’s education is to pervert the God-given intent of education. The goal of moral education (and all education is to be moral) is to teach the child to distinguish that which is genuinely good from evil?that which is true from false?on God’s terms. Fallen men seek to do this one their own terms, even as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. Hebrews 5:14 tells us that only those who have had their sense “trained in the word of righteousness can discern good and evil.”

How can an education that is based partly on the assumption that the child is created in the image of God and partly on the assumption that the child is but an animal, possibly produce a unified life? This can only lead to a divided life and confusion! This is strongly condemned by our Lord in Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters.” The most fundamental truth?that the child is the image-bearer of God?cannot be ignored or diluted except at a devastating cost.