The Object of an Education
By Milton E. Kern
“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” 2 Tim. 2: 15. That which distinguishes man from the animal is that he is a spiritual being, and has an ideal. We are free moral agents, having the power of choice, and are capable of great development. Our success in life depends largely upon our ideals and our efficiency in attaining them. The purposes which we form and work toward shape the course of our lives. “One’s resolution is one’s prophecy.” The purpose and resolution that a young man or woman has in seeking an education determine largely the benefit obtained from it. A shallow purpose will result in a shallow success. Two young persons may enter school together, enjoy the same privileges and advantages, and one make a grand success, and the other a dismal failure. Opportunities that are seen and seized by the one are not observed at all by the other. The real difference between a great and a small mind is that one sees great things where the other sees small things, or perhaps nothing. Some one has aptly said, “Do not ask whether a young man has been through college, but whether the college has been through him.” “Study to show thyself approved unto God,” and not unto men. To study to please God is to sink our shaft deep into the mine of God’s eternal truth, and get what he wants us to get, and develop characters of which he can approve. Man’s ideals never change. To study to please men is to make a crooked path. To keep the eye fixed upon the Eternal, with the spirit in harmony with him, is to make a straight path for our feet to walk in. The success which you make in studying “to show thyself approved unto God” may not be regarded a success from the standpoint of the world, but “a man must have made very small progress in the true estimate of life if he has not learned that what most men regard as failure may be the most splendid success, and what they regard as enviable success may be the most abject of failures.” We should be willing to make a failure in the eyes of the world if we may but make a success in the eyes of God. Is not the life of Christ the eternal type of such failures? What, then, is the object of an education? Is your object measured in dollars and cents? Is it to obtain a “specific equipment for a limited sphere of action”? If so, your aim is too low. There are two grand objects that should enter into the purpose of every Seventh-day Adventist youth. “Study to show thyself approved unto God.” Study to obtain the harmonious development of all the faculties, seek a training of mind and heart, the development of a godlike character. “A great name among men is as letters traced in the sand; but a spotless character will endure through eternity.” Character-building, then, is22the greatest object before us, even the restoration of the image of God in the soul. That comes before the specific equipment for anything. “First of all,” said Garfield, “I must make myself a bath-man: if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing.” Character is above everything. I fear sometimes that we talk so much about getting a preparation for the work that we lose sight of this great object of an education. Young boys and girls are sometimes urged to make a hasty preparation for some specific work when they fall far short of having the qualities that would give strength and character to the work. Our youth must have breadth of mind, stability of purpose, and unswerving fidelity to God before they are prepared to take any position connected with the sacred work of God. It is sometimes thought, too, that because a student has pursued a specified course of study and passed creditable examinations, he is then surely qualified to do God’s work. But that is not necessarily true by any means. “Character before wealth” was the motto of a Boston merchant. And we might say, “Character before acquirement.” The medieval idea of education was learning. But we are coming to see, in these days, that education is training. We should not go to school to fill up with so many facts, and then go out to distribute them as we would some material thing. Our object in entering school should be for growth and development. Some men spend their lives in getting wealth, rather than growing into a noble life. It is possible for students to make the same mistake. They may spend their time in getting rather than in growing. The first grand purpose of an education, then, is the development of character.