True Education by Ellen G White
Born: November 26, 1827
Chapter 1
Source and Aim of True Education
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Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need of a broader scope, a higher aim. True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study. It means more than a preparation for the life that now is. It has to do with the whole being, and with the whole period of existence possible to man. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers. It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.
The source of such an education is brought to view in these words of Holy Writ, pointing to the Infinite One: In Him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom." Colossians 2:3. "He hath counsel and understanding." Job 12:13.
The world has had its great teachers, men of giant intellect and extensive research, men whose utterances have stimulated thought and opened to view vast fields of knowledge; and these men have been honored as guides and benefactors of their race; but there is One who stands higher than they. We can trace the line of the world's teachers as far back as human records extend; but the
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Light was before them. As the moon and the stars of our solar system shine by the reflected light of the sun, so, as far as their teaching is true, do the world's great thinkers reflect the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Every gleam of thought, every flash of the intellect, is from the Light of the world.
In these days much is said concerning the nature and importance of "higher education." The true "higher education" is that imparted by Him with whom "is wisdom and strength" (Job 12:13), out of whose mouth "cometh knowledge and understanding." Proverbs 2:6.
In a knowledge of God all true knowledge and real development have their source. Wherever we turn, in the physical, the mental, or the spiritual realm; in whatever we behold, apart from the blight of sin, this knowledge is revealed. Whatever line of investigation we pursue, with a sincere purpose to arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty Intelligence that is working in and through all. The mind of man is brought into communion with the mind of God, the finite with the Infinite. The effect of such communion on body and mind and soul is beyond estimate.
In this communion is found the highest education. It is God's own method of development. "Acquaint now thyself with Him" (Job 22:21), is His message to mankind. The method outlined in these words was the method followed in the education of the father of our race. When in the glory of sinless manhood Adam stood in holy Eden, it was thus that God instructed him.
In order to understand what is comprehended in the work of education, we need to consider both the nature of man and the purpose of God in creating him. We need to consider also the change in man's condition through
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the coming in of a knowledge of evil, and God's plan for still fulfilling His glorious purpose in the education of the human race.
When Adam came from the Creator's hand, he bore, in his physical, mental, and spiritual nature, a likeness to his Maker. "God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27), and it was His purpose that the longer man lived the more fully he should reveal this image--the more fully reflect the glory of the Creator. All his faculties were capable of development; their capacity and vigor were continually to increase. Vast was the scope offered for their exercise, glorious the field opened to their research. The mysteries of the visible universe--the "wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge" (Job 37:16)--invited man's study. Face-to-face, heart-to-heart communion with his Maker was his high privilege. Had he remained loyal to God, all this would have been his forever. Throughout eternal ages he would have continued to gain new treasures of knowledge, to discover fresh springs of happiness, and to obtain clearer and yet clearer conceptions of the wisdom, the power, and the love of God. More and more fully would he have fulfilled the object of his creation, more and more fully have reflected the Creator's glory.
But by disobedience this was forfeited. Through sin the divine likeness was marred, and well-nigh obliterated. Man's physical powers were weakened, his mental capacity was lessened, his spiritual vision dimmed. He had become subject to death. Yet the race was not left without hope. By infinite love and mercy the plan of salvation had been devised, and a life of probation was granted. To restore in man the image of his Maker, to bring him back
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to the perfection in which he was created, to promote the development of body, mind, and soul, that the divine purpose in his creation might be realized--this was to be the work of redemption. This is the object of education, the great object of life.
Love, the basis of creation and of redemption, is the basis of true education. This is made plain in the law that God has given as the guide of life. The first and great commandment is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." Luke 10:27. To love Him, the infinite, the omniscient One, with the whole strength, and mind, and heart, means the highest development of every power. It means that in the whole being-- the body, the mind, as well as the soul--the image of God is to be restored.
Like the first is the second commandment--"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew 22:39. The law of love calls for the devotion of body, mind, and soul to the service of God and our fellow men. And this service, while making us a blessing to others, brings the greatest blessing to ourselves. Unselfishness underlies all true development. Through unselfish service we receive the highest culture of every faculty. More and more fully do we become partakers of the divine nature. We are fitted for heaven, for we receive heaven into our hearts.
Since God is the source of all true knowledge, it is, as we have seen, the first object of education to direct our minds to His own revelation of Himself. Adam and Eve received knowledge through direct communion with God; and they learned of Him through His works. All created things, in their original perfection, were an expression
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of the thought of God. To Adam and Eve nature was teeming with divine wisdom. But by transgression man was cut off from learning of God through direct communion and, to a great degree, through His works. The earth, marred and defiled by sin, reflects but dimly the Creator's glory. It is true that His object lessons are not obliterated. Upon every page of the great volume of His created works may still be traced His handwriting. Nature still speaks of her Creator. Yet these revelations are partial and imperfect. And in our fallen state, with weakened powers and restricted vision, we are incapable of interpreting aright. We need the fuller revelation of Himself that God has given in His written word.
The Holy Scriptures are the perfect standard of truth, and as such should be given the highest place in education. To obtain an education worthy of the name, we must receive a knowledge of God, the Creator, and of Christ, the Redeemer, as they are revealed in the sacred word.
Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator-- individuality, power to think and to do. The men in whom this power is developed are the men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought. Instead of confining their study to that which men have said or written, let students be directed to the sources of truth, to the vast fields opened for research in nature and revelation. Let them contemplate the great facts of duty and destiny, and the mind will expand and strengthen.
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Instead of educated weaklings, institutions of learning may send forth men strong to think and to act, men who are masters and not slaves of circumstances, men who possess breadth of mind, clearness of thought, and the courage of their convictions.
Such an education provides more than mental discipline; it provides more than physical training. It strengthens the character, so that truth and uprightness are not sacrificed to selfish desire or worldly ambition. It fortifies the mind against evil. Instead of some master passion becoming a power to destroy, every motive and desire are brought into conformity to the great principles of right. As the perfection of His character is dwelt upon, the mind is renewed, and the soul is re-created in the image of God.
What education can be higher than this? What can equal it in value?
"It cannot be gotten for gold,
Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir,
With the precious onyx, or the sapphire.
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it
And the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls:
For the price of wisdom is above rubies." Job 28:15-18.
Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God's ideal for His children. Godliness--godlikeness--is the goal to be reached. Before the student there is opened a path of continual progress. He has an object to achieve, a standard to attain, that includes everything good, and pure, and noble. He will advance as fast and as far as possible in every branch of true knowledge. But his efforts will be directed to objects as much higher than
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mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens are higher than the earth.
He who co-operates with the divine purpose in imparting to the youth a knowledge of God, and molding the character into harmony with His, does a high and noble work. As he awakens a desire to reach God's ideal, he presents an education that is as high as heaven and as broad as the universe; an education that cannot be completed in this life, but that will be continued in the life to come; an education that secures to the successful student his passport from the preparatory school of earth to the higher grade, the school above.
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MUSLIM TEENS JOIN ADVENTISTS IN REFUSING SABBATH EXAMS
Muslim and Adventist 11th graders at an end-of-school party. [photo courtesy Euro-Asia Division]
TEACHERS SPEAK OF A DOUBLE MIRACLE AT ADVENTIST SCHOOL IN FORMER SOVIET UNION
December 16, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review
Muslim students at an Adventist school in the former Soviet Union were so confident that God would intervene to change the day of their state finals from a Sabbath that they stood in solidarity with their Adventist classmates in refusing to take the exams at a public school, even if it meant that they would not graduate.
The teens’ faith paid off.
At the last minute, the government of the predominantly Muslim country authorized the exams to be rescheduled, astonishing Adventist teachers who had spent days agonizing about the situation.
Even more remarkably, the authorization came from the office of a deputy minister who had recently forced the Adventist school to remove the word “Christian” from its name.
“The Muslim students decided to stand firm on the principles of not working and studying on the Sabbath that they had learned at the Adventist school, and this was a wonderful decision,” said Guillermo Biaggi, president of the Adventist Church’s Euro-Asia Division, whose territory includes most of the former Soviet Union.
“God inspired not only someone in the government to change the day for the exams, but He also inspired the students and awarded their trust in our Creator and Redeemer,” he said Thursday.
The story about the Sabbath exams emerged at recent year-end business meetings conducted by the Euro-Asia Division. The Adventist Review is not identifying the school or its location to avoid complicating its work.
'The Only Hope Left Was God'
The school, which teaches 280 students aged 6 to 17, experienced a difficult 2013-14 academic year as it faced various challenges from the authorities and other people unhappy with the presence of a Christian school in a Muslim country, school and Church leaders said.
But nothing prepared the teachers for a surprise Education Ministry decree saying that final exams for ninth and 11th graders nationwide would be held on Saturday.
The teachers began to pray. A few of the school’s 11th graders came from Adventist families, but the majority were Muslim. None of the ninth graders were Adventist.
Every attempt to delay the exams by a day, to Sunday, seemed to fail. No local education officials wanted to shoulder the responsibility of authorizing the change. The school principal sent a letter to an Education Ministry official who promised to help, but he didn’t reply.
“The only hope left was God,” the principal said in a statement provided by the Euro-Asia Division.
She gathered the students together to explain the situation. She said the school was still trying to reschedule the exams but could not promise success. She also said she had made arrangements with a nearby public school to offer the exams to those who wished to take them.
“This gave each student the opportunity to make his or her own decision, knowing full well the consequences of the decision,” the principal said.
Eleventh graders who failed to take the exam would not graduate. Eleventh grade is the last class before graduation from high school in the former Soviet Union.
'That's Impossible!'
Just two days before the exams, the principal suddenly received a phone call from the Education Ministry. The caller, an administrative assistant to a deputy education minister, said that her boss had written a reply to the principal’s seemingly lost letter and that the school could send someone to pick it up.
The principal said she lost all hope with the phone call because the deputy education minister was the same person who had forced the school to change its name a few weeks earlier.
And that’s not all.
“Before the phone call, we had hoped that maybe we could give the exams on a different day and not be noticed by the education officials,” she said. “But now that the government had given an official response, it would be impossible to conduct the exam unnoticed.”
The principal was in for a shock. She recalled that when she tore open the letter from the ministry, she exclaimed, "That's impossible! How the Lord is good!"
It turned out that the deputy education minister had left his office on an extended business trip, and the school’s request had been passed on to another ministry official who had authorized the exams on Sunday.
The principal eagerly shared the news with the students. But when they showed little emotion, she thought that they had misunderstood her and repeated the story. Then one of the students broke the silence with an explanation that the principal found even more incredible than the government’s last-minute permission to reschedule the exams.
The student said: "We never had any doubt that God would help resolve the situation."
The principal found out that none of the students had signed up to take the exams at the public school on Sabbath. As she spoke with them, she learned that they had seen so many manifestations of God’s power during the difficult school year that they had decided God would not abandon the school over something as simple as Sabbath exams. The Muslim students had decided to join their Adventist classmates in standing faithful to the biblical Sabbath.
"Children from non-Adventist families saw how God is leading our school and believed with all their hearts that the problem would be resolved,” the principal said. “It was only us, the Adventist teachers, who were distraught with worry.”
Mayor of Belize’s Largest City Praises Adventist Education
Belize church members making a presentation in the University of Belize auditorium on Thursday evening. [Photo courtesy of Ted. N.C. Wilson]
The mayor meets Adventist Church leader Ted N.C. Wilson at the start of Wilson’s six-country tour
March 23, 2015 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review
The mayor of Belize’s largest city praised the Seventh-day Adventist Church for its work in the Central American country and underscored his appreciation for its large network of local schools.
Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley, flanked by a vice mayor, welcomed Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson and his wife, Nancy, at the airport upon their arrival Thursday for the start of a six-country tour of the church’s Inter-American Division.
Division president Israel Leito is accompanying Wilsons on the trip.
“The mayor expressed gratefulness for the many things the church was doing and especially our extensive educational system in Belize,” Wilson told the Adventist Review on Friday.
The Adventist Church has a strong educational presence in this small country of 341,000 people that borders Mexico and Guatemala to the west and faces the Caribbean Sea to the east. Wilson said 300 to 600 students are baptized every year in the educational system, which includes four kindergartens, 20 elementary schools, five academies, and a junior college.
Nearly one in eight people in Belize is a member of the Adventist Church, and an overwhelming 70 percent of those members are young people.
“People know who Seventh-day Adventist are,” Wilson said. “The Adventist Church in Belize has a wonderful, exciting evangelistic spirit. God is blessing the advancement of His work.”
In addition to the city leaders, Wilson was greeted at the airport by smartly dressed Pathfinders and a delegation of local church officials led by Dennis Slusher, president of the Belize Union of Churches. Accompanied by a police escort, the visitors drove to Belize’s capital, Belmopan, for an evening meeting of 2,000 church members.
Wilson urged the audience in a University of Belize auditorium to "shake Belize for Christ," echoing a call for action that he has used in other countries in recent weeks.
On Friday, Wilson flew to El Salvador, where he will worship on Sabbath. On Sunday he will witness the baptism of more than 2,000 people in Lake Nicaragua after that country’s first major evangelistic campaign. He also will visit Costa Rica and Panama before winding up the trip at a religious freedom conference in Colombia on March 21.
The Adventist Church has blossomed in Belize, a tourist haven and the only country in Central America where English is the official language, since it began work there in 1929. Its 40,898 members worship in 90 churches and 37 companies. The church also operates a local clinic.
"I am very excited about the dedicated membership and leadership in Belize,” Wilson said. “God is using His people in a marvelous way."
