Modern education is failing to train young people adequately.
The primary reason for this failure is that educators overwhelmingly have rejected God.
They have failed to teach the purpose of life — that man is to learn to become like God.
IT IS TIME we understood the facts behind the present educational system that grips the world.
This world is sick! It is suffering from poison that is paralyzing the whole of society. This poison attacks the minds of our children. The poison is WRONG EDUCATION!
What EDUCATION Really Is
Proper education may be defined as the ART OF SUCCESSFUL LIVING.
By this definition very few are really becoming educated. Too few young people are being taught how to live. Education is not merely gained in classrooms from books. Genuine education includes much more — a lifetime of acquiring knowledge, of practical experience, of travel, of contact with God.
The source of education is God! But God is not accepted in the schools. Educators have forgotten that "The Eternal giveth wisdom: out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding" (Prov. 2:6).
Every human being, as long as he is cut off from God, can never become fully educated, no matter how great his material knowledge may be. Complete education involves SPIRITUAL VALUES. The truly educated person becomes physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually matured. Since the natural mind, cut off from God, cannot discern spiritual values, only those whose lives God is molding and using — converting — can become fully educated.
Conversion means a change of mind, a change of behavior. It is not accomplished in a minute — it is a lifetime of study and work. It is an educational process of growing to complete maturity. It means becoming converted from MAN into GOD.
To convert anything means to change it. We are to become converted into God! How many educators know that?
Man's destiny is to be born into the God family. That means we are to begin to think, act, behave like God. We learn how God thinks and acts from the Bible. The Bible reveals the character of God. The Bible is therefore life's basic textbook.
But God wants us to add to our fund of knowledge whatever man can correctly discover for himself. That is the real purpose of schools and colleges. But how many institutions are based on these principles?
As far as we know, only the three campuses of Ambassador College!
In contrast, most colleges and universities today are sick. Teachers have forgotten — or probably never knew — the real purpose of life. Agnosticism permeates their ranks. Hostility toward Divine Authority fills the classroom. Students absorb this spirit of hostility — and rebel against almost any authority.
Then teachers wonder why!
Now let us understand how faulty education commenced and what you can do about it.
How Faulty Education Began
The present educational system is based upon a mixture of truth and error — mostly error!
We are living in the climactic age when six thousand years of the wrong kind of education is finally bearing its fruit. The present educational system is a COUNTERFEIT SCHEME of God's plan of conversion. It all began, if you have ears to hear, with events in the Garden in Eden.
God instructed Adam in right knowledge. God, then, was a teacher — the Supreme Teacher. He imparted to the man knowledge of the purpose of life. He revealed the principles that would lead to a happy marriage. And He commanded man to obey that way for his own good.
Now notice how Satan — the architect of today's educational systems — commenced his scheme. See, with your own eyes, the similarity between it and the techniques used by all too many educators today.
Did he commence by rejecting the previous instructions of God? No! He first planted doubt in the mind of the woman. Then he perverted what God said. He appealed to greed and vanity. He implied that God wanted man chained to ignorance. Isn't that what most educators are saying today?
Here are Satan's words: "God doth know" — but He hasn't told you — He has concealed it from you — "that in the day ye eat thereof, [take of the fruit of the tree that God had expressly forbidden] your eyes shall be opened [to understanding], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).
Observe that the devil promised man knowledge. God had given man the way to knowledge, but the adversary offered another way to acquire it — through experimentation — through disobedience to the express commands of God the great Teacher. All man needed to do was to throw off the authority of God's instruction. Man could solve all his problems apart from the Creator, said the devil. His students parrot the same argument today!
This is the origin of today's educational system! It began by questioning God's function and prerogatives. It began by launching man on the road of human search for understanding without God — the way that seems right to man, but which will end in destruction (Prov. 16:25).
Unlearning Error
True education — conversion — involves the process of unlearning as well as of learning. Of checking into the ideas which we have taken for granted. Let's take note of the classic example of Moses.
Moses was trained in Egyptian education for 40 years. Stephen said of him: "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds" (Acts 7:22).
Egypt possessed the wisdom of that world. So thorough had been his training that Moses had to undergo another 40 years unlearning the errors which he acquired in Egypt. It was only when he had unlearned those errors that God used him. Moses didn't let down in his studies — he made use of his previous training in Pharaoh's court schools, but now directed his life into the right channels.
Through Moses God communicated His plan of education which the world rejected at the beginning. God revealed to Moses and to Israel His laws that are the way to peace of mind, happiness, abundant prosperity. He also revealed an additional fund of knowledge embodying the history of man from Creation. To preserve this PRICELESS heritage, God gave them three great principles of education.
Three Forgotten Principles
First: Parents are to train and instruct their children. The neglect of this obligation by parents and their failure to teach this duty of parenthood to the succeeding generation is the primary cause of all world ills. To insure education in the home God instituted marriage and made it UNBREAKABLE except by death. Notice the Bible exposition of this principle: "Ye shall teach . . . your children, speaking of [God's instruction] when thou sittest down, and when thou risest up" (Deut. 11:19). This same command is repeated by Paul in Ephesians 6:4.
Second: The educators are to be God's ministers and teachers. They do not choose this profession on their own. God calls them to instruct the parents and children in the ways and the laws of God. How many are doing that today?
The Ten Commandments are "exceedingly broad" said David (Psalm 119:96). They constitute the broad foundation of all knowledge which God's ministers and teachers are commanded to communicate to the people. God's Commandments are the foundation of a true liberal arts education. They reveal how to live, how to be happy, how to enjoy peace of mind.
In Leviticus 10:11 God's educators and ministers are commanded to "teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses." And again in Malachi 2:7, we read: "For the priest's lips should KEEP KNOWLEDGE; and they should SEEK THE LAW AT HIS MOUTH: for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts."
The New Testament church is built on the apostles and prophets. Today's professing Christianity has rejected both — and has substituted instead the pagan philosophers as the foundation of knowledge.
Christians are to do the works of Abraham, who was both parent and prophet. Of him we read: "He will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Eternal, to do justice and judgment" (Genesis 18:19).
Third: Special skills are to be taught by those trained in each particular field of occupation. We read in Exodus 35:34, 35 about technical training: "He [God] has also given him Oholiab the son of Ahisamak, belonging to the clan of Dan, ability TO TRAIN OTHERS endowing them with skill in every skillful craft in engraving, in decorating, in handling violet, purple, and scarlet yarn, in working with fine linen, in weaving, and in all sorts of trades and arts" (Moffat translation).
Notice that God did not require the Levites (His ministers under the old covenant) or the parents to train their children in technical fields in every case — that was often reserved for specialists.
This is God's plan for education. It is a perfect balance between the home, the church and the schools. Nations do NOT follow this procedure today.
Today's Babylonish Educational System
Babylon means confusion. Our educational system is a confusion of truth and error. It is the outgrowth of what commenced at Babel. It spread to all nations and has been transmitted through all generations.
It is high time we acquaint ourselves with the facts behind the present educational system — then we will see clearly why Ambassador College is different.
It did not take the ancient Egyptians long to corrupt the three basic principles of education. At the dawn of its history, Egypt had the professional teacher — priests who believed in the idea of making priests the ONLY POSSESSORS OF KNOWLEDGE and in keeping the masses in general ignorance. Only the nobles were instructed so that the few could rule the many through ignorance and poverty. No wonder Egypt has become the basest of nations (Ezek. 29:15-16).
In ancient Greece, leading educators tried to have family life and family ties totally abolished. Aristotle, the great philosopher, allowed the family unit to remain, but he regarded it as likely to affect children more for evil than for good. Apparently in his day parents were not properly training their children. In place of the parents, the State took over responsibility for educating children.
In Athens, a city-state of ancient Greece, education emphasized the intellect. Here developed rhetoric, training in the skills of clever public speaking. Look at the character of that kind of education:
"For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing" (Acts 17:21). Today Greek philosophy has filled most of our institutions of higher learning.
Roman education was originally practical, civic and moral. Youths were taught Roman law — not God's law — by hearing their fathers decide cases of clients in the halls. This was gradually supplanted by the Greek system. Into this world of pagan education came Christianity. The children of early Christians attended the pagan Roman schools because they had none of their own. They used the pagan textbooks. The inevitable happened! After the fall of the Roman Empire, the pagan teaching and doctrines of ancient Rome were engrafted onto Christianity. Pagan influences dominated education and the people remained in superstitious ignorance for a thousand years!
In the Middle Ages state universities were founded — under the control of the Church. Later grammar schools were founded in connection with cathedrals, and trade schools in connection with medieval guilds. Materialism was slowly emerging. Little schooling occurred until after the unstable 18th century. The popular idea in that century of the "natural rights" of man led to the belief that boys should be trained to meet the world. And thus was born the modern educational system.