education

• purpose of education › to integrate the isolated child

2:7.12Truth is co­her­ent, beauty at­trac­tive, good­ness sta­bi­liz­ing. And when these val­ues of that which is real are co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, the re­sult is a high or­der of love con­di­tioned by wis­dom and qual­i­fied by loy­alty. The real pur­pose of all uni­verse ed­u­ca­tion is to ef­fect the bet­ter co-or­di­na­tion of the iso­lated child of the worlds with the larger re­al­i­ties of his ex­pand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­al­ity is fi­nite on the hu­man level, in­fi­nite and eter­nal on the higher and di­vine lev­els.

• purpose of education › indispensable for getting most out of a good inheritance

16:6.11It is the pur­pose of ed­u­ca­tion to de­velop and sharpen these in­nate en­dow­ments of the hu­man mind; of civ­i­liza­tion to ex­press them; of life ex­pe­ri­ence to re­al­ize them; of re­li­gion to en­no­ble them; and of per­son­al­ity to unify them.

• persons can learn from looking as well as leaping

16:7.2The se­lec­tive re­sponse of an an­i­mal is lim­ited to the mo­tor level of be­hav­ior. The sup­posed in­sight of the higher an­i­mals is on a mo­tor level and usu­ally ap­pears only af­ter the ex­pe­ri­ence of mo­tor trial and er­ror. Man is able to ex­er­cise sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sight prior to all ex­plo­ration or ex­per­i­men­ta­tion.

16:7.3Only a per­son­al­ity can know what it is do­ing be­fore it does it; only per­son­al­i­ties pos­sess in­sight in ad­vance of ex­pe­ri­ence. A per­son­al­ity can look be­fore it leaps and can there­fore learn from look­ing as well as from leap­ing. A non­per­sonal an­i­mal or­di­nar­ily learns only by leap­ing.

• method › Inspired Trinity Spirits teach superconsciously

19:5.7The In­spired Spir­its do not ap­par­ently be­long to the evo­lu­tion­ary scheme of the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets or uni­verses, and yet they seem to be al­most ev­ery­where. Even as I am en­gaged in the for­mu­la­tion of this state­ment, my as­so­ci­ated Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger’s per­sonal sen­si­tiv­ity to the pres­ence of this or­der of Spirit in­di­cates that there is with us at this very mo­ment, not over twenty-five feet away, a Spirit of the In­spired or­der and of the third vol­ume of power pres­ence. The third vol­ume of power pres­ence sug­gests to us the prob­a­bil­ity that three In­spired Spir­its are func­tion­ing in li­ai­son.

19:5.8Of more than twelve or­ders of be­ings as­so­ci­ated with me at this time, the Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger is the only one aware of the pres­ence of these mys­te­ri­ous en­ti­ties of the Trin­ity. And fur­ther, while we are thus ap­prised of the near­ness of these di­vine Spir­its, we are all equally ig­no­rant of their mis­sion. We re­ally do not know whether they are merely in­ter­ested ob­servers of our do­ings, or whether they are, in some man­ner un­known to us, ac­tu­ally con­tribut­ing to the suc­cess of our un­der­tak­ing.

19:5.9We know that the Trin­ity Teacher Sons are de­voted to the con­scious en­light­en­ment of uni­verse crea­tures. I have ar­rived at the set­tled con­clu­sion that the In­spired Trin­ity Spir­its, by super­con­scious tech­niques, are also func­tion­ing as teach­ers of the realms. I am per­suaded that there is a vast body of es­sen­tial spir­i­tual knowl­edge, truth in­dis­pens­able to high spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, which can­not be con­sciously re­ceived; self-con­scious­ness would ef­fec­tively jeop­ar­dize the cer­tainty of re­cep­tion. If we are right in this con­cept, and my en­tire or­der of be­ing shares it, it may be the mis­sion of these In­spired Spir­its to over­come this dif­fi­culty, to bridge this gap in the uni­ver­sal scheme of moral en­light­en­ment and spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment. We think that these two types of Trin­ity-ori­gin teach­ers ef­fect some kind of li­ai­son in their ac­tiv­i­ties, but we do not re­ally know.

• purpose of education › to increase respect for opinions of others

25:3.126. Con­cil­ia­tors to the Super­uni­verse Ma­jor Sec­tors. The char­ac­ter of the work of the com­mis­sion­ers con­tin­ues to change as they ad­vance. There is less and less of mis­un­der­stand­ing to ad­ju­di­cate and more and more of mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­ena to ex­plain and in­ter­pret. From stage to stage they are evolv­ing from ar­biters of dif­fer­ences to ex­plain­ers of mys­ter­ies—judges evolv­ing into in­ter­pre­ta­tive teach­ers. Ar­biters of those who through ig­no­rance per­mit dif­fi­cul­ties and mis­un­der­stand­ings to arise, they once were; but they are now be­com­ing in­struc­tors of those who are suf­fi­ciently in­tel­li­gent and tol­er­ant to avoid clashes of mind and wars of opin­ions. The higher a crea­ture’s ed­u­ca­tion, the more re­spect he has for the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence, and opin­ions of oth­ers.

• method › being pupil-teachers

25:4.12Those mor­tals and mid­way­ers who serve tran­siently with the ad­vis­ers are cho­sen for such work be­cause of their ex­pert­ness in the con­cept of uni­ver­sal law and su­preme jus­tice. As you jour­ney to­ward your Par­a­dise goal, con­stantly ac­quir­ing added knowl­edge and en­hanced skill, you are con­tin­u­ously af­forded the op­por­tu­nity to give out to oth­ers the wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence you have al­ready ac­cu­mu­lated; all the way in to Ha­vona you en­act the role of a pupil-teacher. You will work your way through the as­cend­ing lev­els of this vast ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­ver­sity by im­part­ing to those just be­low you the new-found knowl­edge of your ad­vanc­ing ca­reer. In the uni­ver­sal regime you are not reck­oned as hav­ing pos­sessed your­self of knowl­edge and truth un­til you have demon­strated your abil­ity and your will­ing­ness to im­part this knowl­edge and truth to oth­ers.

• method › Havona graph method; high speed Paradise method

26:3.85. The In­tel­li­gence Co-or­di­na­tors. These ter­tiary super­na­phim, the chil­dren of the fifth Cir­cuit Spirit, are al­ways the wise and sym­pa­thetic pro­mot­ers of fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween the as­cend­ing and the de­scend­ing pil­grims. They min­is­ter to all the in­hab­i­tants of Ha­vona, and es­pe­cially to the as­cend­ers, by keep­ing them cur­rently in­formed re­gard­ing the af­fairs of the uni­verse of uni­verses. By virtue of per­sonal con­tacts with the broad­cast­ers and the re­flec­tors, these “liv­ing news­pa­pers” of Ha­vona are in­stantly con­ver­sant with all in­for­ma­tion pass­ing over the vast news cir­cuits of the cen­tral uni­verse. They se­cure in­tel­li­gence by the Ha­vona graph method, which en­ables them au­to­mat­i­cally to as­sim­i­late as much in­for­ma­tion in one hour of Uran­tia time as would re­quire a thou­sand years for your most rapid tele­graphic tech­nique to re­cord.

• method › Havona graph method; high speed Paradise method

27:6.4These Par­a­dise philoso­phers teach by ev­ery pos­si­ble method of in­struc­tion, in­clud­ing the higher graph tech­nique of Ha­vona and cer­tain Par­a­dise meth­ods of com­mu­ni­cat­ing in­for­ma­tion. All of these higher tech­niques of im­part­ing knowl­edge and con­vey­ing ideas are ut­terly be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity of even the most highly de­vel­oped hu­man mind. One hour’s in­struc­tion on Par­a­dise would be the equiv­a­lent of ten thou­sand years of the word-mem­ory meth­ods of Uran­tia. You can­not grasp such com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques, and there is sim­ply noth­ing in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with which they may be com­pared, noth­ing to which they can be likened.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

30:3.9The en­tire as­cen­dant plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion is char­ac­ter­ized by the prac­tice of giv­ing out to other be­ings new truth and ex­pe­ri­ence just as soon as ac­quired. You work your way through the long school of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment by serv­ing as teach­ers to those pupils just be­hind you in the scale of pro­gres­sion.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

30:4.23There are three or­ders of stu­dent spir­its in ac­cor­dance with their so­journ upon the mi­nor sec­tor, ma­jor sec­tors, and the super­uni­verse head­quar­ters worlds of spirit pro­gres­sion. As mor­ontia as­cend­ers stud­ied and worked on the worlds of the lo­cal uni­verse, so spirit as­cend­ers con­tinue to mas­ter new worlds while they prac­tice at giv­ing out to oth­ers that which they have im­bibed at the ex­pe­ri­en­tial founts of wis­dom. But go­ing to school as a spirit be­ing in the super­uni­verse ca­reer is very un­like any­thing that has ever en­tered the imag­i­na­tive realms of the ma­te­rial mind of man.

• not the same for all ascenders

30:4.25The super­uni­verse regime is not the same for all as­cend­ing mor­tals. They re­ceive the same gen­eral ed­u­ca­tion, but spe­cial groups and classes are car­ried through spe­cial courses of in­struc­tion and are put through spe­cific courses of train­ing.

• method › finaliters trained to limits of capacity

31:3.73. The glo­ri­fied mor­tals of the Par­a­dise Corps of Fi­nal­ity are as­cen­dant be­ings in pos­ses­sion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge of ev­ery step of the ac­tu­al­ity and phi­los­o­phy of the fullest pos­si­ble life of in­tel­li­gent ex­is­tence, while dur­ing the ages of this as­cent from the low­est ma­te­rial worlds to the spir­i­tual heights of Par­a­dise, these sur­viv­ing crea­tures have been trained to the lim­its of their ca­pac­ity re­spect­ing ev­ery de­tail of ev­ery di­vine prin­ci­ple of the just and ef­fi­cient, as well as mer­ci­ful and pa­tient, ad­min­is­tra­tion of all the uni­ver­sal cre­ation of time and space.

35:3.1The Mel­chiz­e­deks oc­cupy a world of their own near Sal­ving­ton, the uni­verse head­quar­ters. This sphere, by name Mel­chiz­e­dek, is the pi­lot world of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit of sev­enty pri­mary spheres, each of which is en­cir­cled by six trib­u­tary spheres de­voted to spe­cial­ized ac­tiv­i­ties. These mar­velous spheres—sev­enty pri­maries and 420 trib­u­taries—are of­ten spo­ken of as the Mel­chiz­e­dek Uni­ver­sity. As­cend­ing mor­tals from all the con­stel­la­tions of Neb­a­don pass through train­ing on all 490 worlds in the ac­quire­ment of res­i­den­tial sta­tus on Sal­ving­ton. But the ed­u­ca­tion of as­cend­ers is only one phase of the man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place on the Sal­ving­ton clus­ter of ar­chi­tec­tural spheres.

35:3.2The 490 spheres of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit are di­vided into ten groups, each con­tain­ing seven pri­mary and forty-two trib­u­tary spheres. Each of these groups is un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of some one of the ma­jor or­ders of uni­verse life. The first group, em­brac­ing the pi­lot world and the next six pri­mary spheres in the en­cir­cling plan­e­tary pro­ces­sion, is un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks. These Mel­chiz­e­dek worlds are:

35:3.31. The pi­lot world—the home world of the Mel­chiz­e­dek Sons.

35:3.42. The world of the phys­i­cal-life schools and the lab­o­ra­to­ries of liv­ing en­er­gies.

35:3.53. The world of mor­ontia life.

35:3.64. The sphere of ini­tial spirit life.

35:3.75. The world of mid-spirit life.

35:3.86. The sphere of ad­vanc­ing spirit life.

35:3.97. The do­main of co-or­di­nate and su­preme self-re­al­iza­tion.

35:3.10The six trib­u­tary worlds of each of these Mel­chiz­e­dek spheres are de­voted to ac­tiv­i­ties ger­mane to the work of the as­so­ci­ated pri­mary sphere.

35:3.11The pi­lot world, the sphere Mel­chiz­e­dek, is the com­mon meet­ing ground for all be­ings who are en­gaged in ed­u­cat­ing and spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing the as­cend­ing mor­tals of time and space. To an as­cender this world is prob­a­bly the most in­ter­est­ing place in all Neb­a­don. All evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals who grad­u­ate from their con­stel­la­tion train­ing are des­tined to land on Mel­chiz­e­dek, where they are ini­ti­ated into the regime of the dis­ci­plines and spirit pro­gres­sion of the Sal­ving­ton ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem. And never will you for­get your re­ac­tions to the first day of life on this unique world, not even af­ter you have reached your Par­a­dise des­ti­na­tion.

35:3.12As­cend­ing mor­tals main­tain res­i­dence on the Mel­chiz­e­dek world while pur­su­ing their train­ing on the six en­cir­cling plan­ets of spe­cial­ized ed­u­ca­tion. And this same method is ad­hered to through­out their so­journ on the sev­enty cul­tural worlds, the pri­mary spheres of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit.

35:3.13Many di­verse ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cupy the time of the nu­mer­ous be­ings who re­side on the six trib­u­tary worlds of the Mel­chiz­e­dek sphere, but as con­cerns the as­cend­ing mor­tals, these satel­lites are de­voted to the fol­low­ing spe­cial phases of study:

35:3.141. Sphere num­ber one is oc­cu­pied with the re­view of the ini­tial plan­e­tary life of the as­cend­ing mor­tals. This work is car­ried on in classes com­posed of those who hail from a given world of mor­tal ori­gin. Those from Uran­tia pur­sue such an ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­view to­gether.

35:3.152. The spe­cial work of sphere num­ber two con­sists in a sim­i­lar re­view of the ex­pe­ri­ences passed through on the man­sion worlds en­cir­cling the pre­mier satel­lite of the lo­cal sys­tem head­quar­ters.

35:3.163. The re­views of this sphere per­tain to the so­journ on the cap­i­tal of the lo­cal sys­tem and em­brace the ac­tiv­i­ties of the re­main­der of the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds of the sys­tem head­quar­ters clus­ter.

35:3.174. The fourth sphere is oc­cu­pied with a re­view of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the sev­enty trib­u­tary worlds of the con­stel­la­tion and of their as­so­ci­ated spheres.

35:3.185. On the fifth sphere there is con­ducted the re­view of the as­cen­dant so­journ on the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters world.

35:3.196. The time on sphere num­ber six is de­voted to an at­tempt to cor­re­late these five epochs and thus achieve co-or­di­na­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence prepara­tory to en­ter­ing the Mel­chiz­e­dek pri­mary schools of uni­verse train­ing.

35:3.20The schools of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion and spir­i­tual wis­dom are lo­cated on the Mel­chiz­e­dek home world, where also are to be found those schools de­voted to a sin­gle line of re­search, such as en­ergy, mat­ter, or­ga­ni­za­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rec­ords, ethics, and com­par­a­tive crea­ture ex­is­tence.

35:3.21In the Mel­chiz­e­dek Col­lege of Spir­i­tual En­dow­ment all or­ders—even the Par­a­dise or­ders—of the Sons of God co-op­er­ate with the Mel­chiz­e­dek and the se­raphic teach­ers in train­ing the hosts who go forth as evan­gels of des­tiny, pro­claim­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty and di­vine son­ship even to the re­mote worlds of the uni­verse. This par­tic­u­lar school of the Mel­chiz­e­dek Uni­ver­sity is an ex­clu­sive uni­verse in­sti­tu­tion; stu­dent vis­i­tors are not re­ceived from other realms.

35:3.22The high­est course of train­ing in uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion is given by the Mel­chiz­e­deks on their home world. This Col­lege of High Ethics is pre­sided over by the orig­i­nal Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek. It is to these schools that the var­i­ous uni­verses send ex­change stu­dents. While the young uni­verse of Neb­a­don stands low in the scale of uni­verses as re­gards spir­i­tual achieve­ment and high eth­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, nev­er­the­less, our ad­min­is­tra­tive trou­bles have so turned the whole uni­verse into a vast clinic for other near-by cre­ations that the Mel­chiz­e­dek col­leges are thronged with stu­dent vis­i­tors and ob­servers from other realms. Be­sides the im­mense group of lo­cal reg­is­trants there are al­ways up­ward of one hun­dred thou­sand for­eign stu­dents in at­ten­dance upon the Mel­chiz­e­dek schools, for the or­der of Mel­chiz­e­deks in Neb­a­don is renowned through­out all Splan­don.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

35:4.1A highly spe­cial­ized branch of Mel­chiz­e­dek ac­tiv­i­ties has to do with the super­vi­sion of the pro­gres­sive mor­ontia ca­reer of the as­cend­ing mor­tals. Much of this train­ing is con­ducted by the pa­tient and wise se­raphic min­is­ters, as­sisted by mor­tals who have as­cended to rel­a­tively higher lev­els of uni­verse at­tain­ment, but all of this ed­u­ca­tional work is un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Trin­ity Teacher Sons.

• universe schools › Vorondadek worlds teach legislation

35:7.1The sec­ond group of seven worlds in the cir­cuit of sev­enty pri­mary spheres sur­round­ing Sal­ving­ton com­prise the Vo­ron­da­dek plan­ets. Each of these spheres, with its six en­cir­cling satel­lites, is de­voted to a spe­cial phase of Vo­ron­da­dek ac­tiv­i­ties. On these forty-nine realms the as­cend­ing mor­tals se­cure the acme of their ed­u­ca­tion re­spect­ing uni­verse leg­is­la­tion.

35:7.2The as­cend­ing mor­tals have ob­served the leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies as they func­tioned on the head­quar­ters worlds of the con­stel­la­tions, but here on these Vo­ron­da­dek worlds they par­tic­i­pate in the en­act­ment of the ac­tual gen­eral leg­is­la­tion of the lo­cal uni­verse un­der the tute­lage of the se­nior Voron­dadeks. Such en­act­ments are de­signed to co-or­di­nate the var­ied pro­nounce­ments of the au­ton­o­mous leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies of the one hun­dred con­stel­la­tions. The in­struc­tion to be had in the Vo­ron­da­dek schools is un­ex­celled even on Uversa. This train­ing is pro­gres­sive, ex­tend­ing from the first sphere, with sup­ple­men­tal work on its six satel­lites, on up through the re­main­ing six pri­mary spheres and their as­so­ci­ated satel­lite groups.

• method › by learning and doing

35:10.3While serv­ing as train­ing spheres for as­cend­ing mor­tals, the La­non­an­dek worlds are the cen­ters for ex­ten­sive un­der­tak­ings hav­ing to do with the nor­mal and rou­tine ad­min­is­tra­tive op­er­a­tions of the uni­verse. All the way in to Par­a­dise the as­cend­ing pil­grims pur­sue their stud­ies in the prac­ti­cal schools of ap­plied knowl­edge—ac­tual train­ing in re­ally do­ing the things they are be­ing taught. The uni­verse ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem spon­sored by the Mel­chiz­e­deks is prac­ti­cal, pro­gres­sive, mean­ing­ful, and ex­pe­ri­en­tial. It em­braces train­ing in things ma­te­rial, in­tel­lec­tual, mor­ontial, and spir­i­tual.

• universe schools › on 490 Salvington spheres

37:6.1The Neb­a­don ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem is jointly ad­min­is­tered by the Trin­ity Teacher Sons and the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing corps, but much of the work de­signed to ef­fect its main­te­nance and up­build­ing is car­ried on by the Ce­les­tial Over­seers. These be­ings are a re­cruited corps em­brac­ing all types of in­di­vid­u­als con­nected with the scheme of ed­u­cat­ing and train­ing the as­cend­ing mor­tals. There are up­ward of three mil­lion of them in Neb­a­don, and they are all vol­un­teers who have qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to serve as ed­u­ca­tional ad­vis­ers to the en­tire realm. From their head­quar­ters on the Sal­ving­ton worlds of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, these over­seers range the lo­cal uni­verse as in­spec­tors of the Neb­a­don school tech­nique de­signed to ef­fect the mind train­ing and the spirit ed­u­ca­tion of the as­cend­ing crea­tures.

• universe is one vast school

37:6.2This train­ing of mind and ed­u­ca­tion of spirit is car­ried on from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin up through the sys­tem man­sion worlds and the other spheres of prog­ress as­so­ci­ated with Je­ru­sem, on the sev­enty so­cial­iz­ing realms at­tached to Eden­tia, and on the four hun­dred and ninety spheres of spirit prog­ress en­cir­cling Sal­ving­ton. On the uni­verse head­quar­ters it­self are nu­mer­ous Mel­chiz­e­dek schools, the col­leges of the Uni­verse Sons, the se­raphic uni­ver­si­ties, and the schools of the Teacher Sons and the Union of Days. Ev­ery pos­si­ble pro­vi­sion is made to qual­ify the var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verse for ad­vanc­ing ser­vice and im­prov­ing func­tion. The en­tire uni­verse is one vast school.

• method › by learning and doing
• purpose of education › character acquired by enlightened experience

37:6.3The meth­ods em­ployed in many of the higher schools are be­yond the hu­man con­cept of the art of teach­ing truth, but this is the keynote of the whole ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem: char­ac­ter ac­quired by en­light­ened ex­pe­ri­ence. The teach­ers pro­vide the en­light­en­ment; the uni­verse sta­tion and the as­cender’s sta­tus af­ford the op­por­tu­nity for ex­pe­ri­ence; the wise uti­liza­tion of these two aug­ments char­ac­ter.

• method › assign definite task with qualified instruction

37:6.4Fun­da­men­tally, the Neb­a­don ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem pro­vides for your as­sign­ment to a task and then af­fords you op­por­tu­nity to re­ceive in­struc­tion as to the ideal and di­vine method of best per­form­ing that task. You are given a def­i­nite task to per­form, and at the same time you are pro­vided with teach­ers who are qual­i­fied to in­struct you in the best method of ex­e­cut­ing your as­sign­ment. The di­vine plan of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides for the in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion of work and in­struc­tion. We teach you how best to ex­e­cute the things we com­mand you to do.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

37:10.5Al­ways there is at­tached to the uni­verse ser­vice a corps of as­cend­ing mor­tals, in­clud­ing the glo­ri­fied mid­way crea­tures. These as­cend­ers, af­ter at­tain­ing Sal­ving­ton, are used in an al­most end­less va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties in the con­duct of uni­verse af­fairs. From each level of achieve­ment these ad­vanc­ing mor­tals reach back and down to ex­tend a help­ing hand to their fel­lows who fol­low them in the up­ward climb. Such mor­tals of tem­po­rary so­journ on Sal­ving­ton are as­signed on req­ui­si­tion to prac­ti­cally all corps of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as helpers, stu­dents, ob­servers, and teach­ers.

• not what we learn, but our experience of living

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

• purpose of education › eternal adventure should be supreme study

40:7.4These are the mor­tals who have been com­manded by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.” The Fa­ther has be­stowed him­self upon you, placed his own spirit within you; there­fore does he de­mand ul­ti­mate per­fec­tion of you. The nar­ra­tive of hu­man as­cent from the mor­tal spheres of time to the di­vine realms of eter­nity con­sti­tutes an in­trigu­ing recital not in­cluded in my as­sign­ment, but this su­per­nal ad­ven­ture should be the su­preme study of mor­tal man.

• method › being pupil-teachers

44:0.13The orig­i­nal teach­ers of these seven groups all hailed from the per­fect worlds of Ha­vona, and Ha­vona con­tains the pat­terns, the pat­tern stud­ies, for all phases and forms of spirit artistry. While it is a gi­gan­tic task to un­der­take to trans­fer these arts of Ha­vona to the worlds of space, the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans have im­proved in tech­nique and ex­e­cu­tion from age to age. As in all other phases of the as­cend­ing ca­reer those who are most ad­vanced in any line of en­deavor are re­quired con­stantly to im­part their su­pe­rior knowl­edge and skill to their less fa­vored fel­lows.

• method › value in mingling with diverse groups

46:5.29The ac­tiv­i­ties of such a world are of three dis­tinct va­ri­eties: work, prog­ress, and play. Stated oth­er­wise, they are: ser­vice, study, and re­lax­ation. The com­pos­ite ac­tiv­i­ties con­sist of so­cial in­ter­course, group en­ter­tain­ment, and di­vine wor­ship. There is great ed­u­ca­tional value in min­gling with di­verse groups of per­son­al­i­ties, or­ders very dif­fer­ent from one’s own fel­lows.

• method › morontia progressors learn languages much as we do here

48:3.13You will not ac­quire new lan­guages au­to­mat­i­cally; you will learn a lan­guage over there much as you do down here, and these bril­liant be­ings will be your lan­guage teach­ers. The first study on the man­sion worlds will be the tongue of Sa­ta­nia and then the lan­guage of Neb­a­don. And while you are mas­ter­ing these new tongues, the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be your ef­fi­cient in­ter­preters and pa­tient trans­la­tors. You will never en­counter a vis­i­tor on any of these worlds but that some one of the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be able to of­fi­ci­ate as in­ter­preter.

• universe schools › schools of ethics, administration, and social adjustment at constellation
• universe schools › schools of philosophy, divinity, and pure spirituality at Salvington
• universe schools › schools of thinking, feeling, and doing in morontia

48:5.6In the schools of the mor­ontia life these teach­ers en­gage in in­di­vid­ual, group, class, and mass teach­ing. On the man­sion worlds such schools are or­ga­nized in three gen­eral groups of one hun­dred di­vi­sions each: the schools of think­ing, the schools of feel­ing, and the schools of do­ing. When you reach the con­stel­la­tion, there are added the schools of ethics, the schools of ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the schools of so­cial ad­just­ment. On the uni­verse head­quar­ters worlds you will en­ter the schools of phi­los­o­phy, di­vin­ity, and pure spir­i­tu­al­ity.

• warnings › what we fail to learn here we must learn hereafter

48:5.7Those things which you might have learned on earth, but which you failed to learn, must be ac­quired un­der the tute­lage of these faith­ful and pa­tient teach­ers. There are no royal roads, short cuts, or easy paths to Par­a­dise. Ir­re­spec­tive of the in­di­vid­ual vari­a­tions of the route, you mas­ter the lessons of one sphere be­fore you pro­ceed to an­other; at least this is true af­ter you once leave the world of your na­tiv­ity.

• purpose of education › to seek truth as well as fact, expand soul as well as mind

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

• method › mota taught by parallel technique

48:7.1The lower planes of mor­ontia mota join di­rectly with the higher lev­els of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. On the first man­sion world it is the prac­tice to teach the less ad­vanced stu­dents by the par­al­lel tech­nique; that is, in one col­umn are pre­sented the more sim­ple con­cepts of mota mean­ings, and in the op­po­site col­umn ci­ta­tion is made of anal­o­gous state­ments of mor­tal phi­los­o­phy.

• method › spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into material memory

48:7.53. In­her­ent ca­pac­i­ties can­not be ex­ceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit con­cept can­not be me­chan­i­cally forced into the ma­te­rial mem­ory mold.

• purpose of education › graduated opportunity to master details of operation and administration of universe

48:8.2There is a def­i­nite and di­vine pur­pose in all this mor­ontia and sub­se­quent spirit scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion, this elab­o­rate uni­verse train­ing school for as­cend­ing crea­tures. It is the de­sign of the Cre­ators to af­ford the crea­tures of time a grad­u­ated op­por­tu­nity to mas­ter the de­tails of the op­er­a­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the grand uni­verse, and this long course of train­ing is best car­ried for­ward by hav­ing the sur­viv­ing mor­tal climb up grad­u­ally and by ac­tual par­tic­i­pa­tion in ev­ery step of the as­cent.

• method › each unit of life trains for stage just ahead

49:0.1All mor­tal-in­hab­ited worlds are evo­lu­tion­ary in ori­gin and na­ture. These spheres are the spawn­ing ground, the evo­lu­tion­ary cra­dle, of the mor­tal races of time and space. Each unit of the as­cen­dant life is a ver­i­ta­ble train­ing school for the stage of ex­is­tence just ahead, and this is true of ev­ery stage of man’s pro­gres­sive Par­a­dise as­cent; just as true of the ini­tial mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet as of the fi­nal uni­verse head­quar­ters school of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, a school which is not at­tended by as­cend­ing mor­tals un­til just be­fore their trans­la­tion to the regime of the super­uni­verse and the at­tain­ment of first-stage spirit ex­is­tence.

• historically › schools of Planetary Princes

50:4.3In the head­quar­ters set­tle­ment on your world ev­ery hu­man habi­ta­tion was pro­vided with abun­dance of land. Al­though the re­mote tribes con­tin­ued in hunt­ing and food for­ag­ing, the stu­dents and teach­ers in the Prince’s schools were all agri­cul­tur­ists and hor­ti­cul­tur­ists. The time was about equally di­vided be­tween the fol­low­ing pur­suits:

50:4.41. Phys­i­cal la­bor. Cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, as­so­ci­ated with home build­ing and em­bel­lish­ment.

50:4.52. So­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. Play per­for­mances and cul­tural so­cial group­ings.

50:4.63. Ed­u­ca­tional ap­pli­ca­tion. In­di­vid­ual in­struc­tion in con­nec­tion with fam­ily-group teach­ing, sup­ple­mented by spe­cial­ized class train­ing.

50:4.74. Vo­ca­tional train­ing. Schools of mar­riage and home­mak­ing, the schools of art and craft train­ing, and the classes for the train­ing of teach­ers—sec­u­lar, cul­tural, and re­li­gious.

50:4.85. Spir­i­tual cul­ture. The teacher broth­er­hood, the en­light­en­ment of child­hood and youth groups, and the train­ing of adopted na­tive chil­dren as mis­sion­ar­ies to their peo­ple.

50:4.9A Plan­e­tary Prince is not vis­i­ble to mor­tal be­ings; it is a test of faith to be­lieve the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the semi­ma­te­rial be­ings of his staff. But these schools of cul­ture and train­ing are well adapted to the needs of each planet, and there soon de­vel­ops a keen and lauda­tory ri­valry among the races of men in their ef­forts to gain en­trance to these var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing.

50:4.10From such a world cen­ter of cul­ture and achieve­ment there grad­u­ally ra­di­ates to all peo­ples an up­lift­ing and civ­i­liz­ing in­flu­ence which slowly and cer­tainly trans­forms the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Mean­time the ed­u­cated and spir­i­tu­al­ized chil­dren of the sur­round­ing peo­ples who have been adopted and trained in the prince’s schools are re­turn­ing to their na­tive groups and, to the best of their abil­ity, are there es­tab­lish­ing new and po­tent cen­ters of learn­ing and cul­ture which they carry on ac­cord­ing to the plan of the prince’s schools.

• method › by learning and doing

50:5.74. The quest for knowl­edge and wis­dom. Food, se­cu­rity, plea­sure, and leisure pro­vide the foun­da­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture and the spread of knowl­edge. The ef­fort to ex­e­cute knowl­edge re­sults in wis­dom, and when a cul­ture has learned how to profit and im­prove by ex­pe­ri­ence, civ­i­liza­tion has re­ally ar­rived. Food, se­cu­rity, and ma­te­rial com­fort still dom­i­nate so­ci­ety, but many for­ward-look­ing in­di­vid­u­als are hun­ger­ing for knowl­edge and thirst­ing for wis­dom. Ev­ery child is pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to learn by do­ing; ed­u­ca­tion is the watch­word of these ages.

• method › experience gives conceptual capacity to comprehend problems

54:6.10As you as­cend in the sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence, you will broaden your uni­verse con­cepts and ex­tend your hori­zon of mean­ings and val­ues; and thus will you be able the bet­ter to un­der­stand why such be­ings as Lu­cifer and Sa­tan are per­mit­ted to con­tinue in re­bel­lion. You will also bet­ter com­pre­hend how ul­ti­mate (if not im­me­di­ate) good can be de­rived from time-lim­ited evil. Af­ter you at­tain Par­a­dise, you will re­ally be en­light­ened and com­forted when you lis­ten to the super­aphic philoso­phers dis­cuss and ex­plain these pro­found prob­lems of uni­verse ad­just­ment. But even then, I doubt that you will be fully sat­is­fied in your own minds. At least I was not even when I had thus at­tained the acme of uni­verse phi­los­o­phy. I did not achieve a full com­pre­hen­sion of these com­plex­i­ties un­til af­ter I had been as­signed to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties in the super­uni­verse, where by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence I have ac­quired con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity ad­e­quate for the com­pre­hen­sion of such many-sided prob­lems in cos­mic eq­uity and spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy. As you as­cend Par­adis­e­ward, you will in­creas­ingly learn that many prob­lem­atic fea­tures of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion can only be com­pre­hended sub­se­quent to the ac­quire­ment of in­creased ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­pac­ity and to the achieve­ment of en­hanced spir­i­tual in­sight. Cos­mic wis­dom is es­sen­tial to the un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic sit­u­a­tions.

• spiritual progress not dependent upon

65:8.4As mind evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on, and de­layed by, the slow de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so is spir­i­tual prog­ress de­pen­dent on men­tal ex­pan­sion and un­fail­ingly de­layed by in­tel­lec­tual re­tar­da­tion. But this does not mean that spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, or wis­dom. The soul may evolve re­gard­less of men­tal cul­ture but not in the ab­sence of men­tal ca­pac­ity and de­sire—the choice of sur­vival and the de­ci­sion to achieve ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion—to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Al­though sur­vival may not de­pend on the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and wis­dom, pro­gres­sion most cer­tainly does.

• historically › schools of Planetary Princes

66:5.94. The fac­ulty on dis­sem­i­na­tion and con­ser­va­tion of knowl­edge. This group or­ga­nized and di­rected the purely ed­u­ca­tional en­deav­ors of those early ages. It was pre­sided over by Fad. The ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods of Fad con­sisted in super­vi­sion of em­ploy­ment ac­com­pa­nied by in­struc­tion in im­proved meth­ods of la­bor. Fad for­mu­lated the first al­pha­bet and in­tro­duced a writ­ing sys­tem. This al­pha­bet con­tained twenty-five char­ac­ters. For writ­ing ma­te­rial these early peo­ples uti­lized tree barks, clay tablets, stone slabs, a form of parch­ment made of ham­mered hides, and a crude form of pa­per­like ma­te­rial made from wasps’ nests. The Dala­ma­tia li­brary, de­stroyed soon af­ter the Cali­gas­tia dis­af­fec­tion, com­prised more than two mil­lion sep­a­rate rec­ords and was known as the “house of Fad.”

66:5.10The blue man was par­tial to al­pha­bet writ­ing and made the great­est prog­ress along such lines. The red man pre­ferred pic­to­rial writ­ing, while the yel­low races drifted into the use of sym­bols for words and ideas, much like those they now em­ploy. But the al­pha­bet and much more was sub­se­quently lost to the world dur­ing the con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon re­bel­lion. The Cali­gas­tia de­fec­tion de­stroyed the hope of the world for a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, at least for un­told ages.

• warnings › confusion precipitated by overteaching

66:6.6The Dala­ma­tia teach­ers sought to add con­scious so­cial se­lec­tion to the purely nat­u­ral se­lec­tion of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. They did not de­range hu­man so­ci­ety, but they did markedly ac­cel­er­ate its nor­mal and nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion. Their mo­tive was pro­gres­sion by evo­lu­tion and not rev­o­lu­tion by rev­e­la­tion. The hu­man race had spent ages in ac­quir­ing the lit­tle re­li­gion and morals it had, and these super­men knew bet­ter than to rob man­kind of these few ad­vances by the con­fu­sion and dis­may which al­ways re­sult when en­light­ened and su­pe­rior be­ings un­der­take to up­lift the back­ward races by overteach­ing and over­en­light­en­ment.

• method › by learning and doing

66:7.6Fad spon­sored the Dala­ma­tia plan of teach­ing that was car­ried out as an in­dus­trial school in which the pupils learned by do­ing, and through which they worked their way by the daily per­for­mance of use­ful tasks. This plan of ed­u­ca­tion did not ig­nore think­ing and feel­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter; but it gave first place to man­ual train­ing. The in­struc­tion was in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive. The pupils were taught by both men and women and by the two act­ing con­jointly. One half of this group in­struc­tion was by sexes; the other half was co­ed­u­ca­tional. Stu­dents were taught man­ual dex­ter­ity as in­di­vid­u­als and were so­cial­ized in groups or classes. They were trained to frat­er­nize with younger groups, older groups, and adults, as well as to do team­work with those of their own ages. They were also fa­mil­iar­ized with such as­so­ci­a­tions as fam­ily groups, play squads, and school classes.

• warnings › Lucifer, with maximum intelligence and experience, went astray

67:3.9Cali­gas­tia, with a max­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and a vast ex­pe­ri­ence in uni­verse af­fairs, went astray—em­braced sin. Amadon, with a min­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and ut­terly de­void of uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ence, re­mained stead­fast in the ser­vice of the uni­verse and in loy­alty to his as­so­ciate. Van uti­lized both mind and spirit in a mag­nif­i­cent and ef­fec­tive com­bi­na­tion of in­tel­lec­tual de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual in­sight, thereby achiev­ing an ex­pe­ri­en­tial level of per­son­al­ity re­al­iza­tion of the high­est at­tain­able or­der. Mind and spirit, when fully united, are po­ten­tial for the cre­ation of super­hu­man val­ues, even mor­ontia re­al­i­ties.

• historically › fire was first e.

69:6.3Fire was a great civ­i­lizer, pro­vid­ing man with his first means of be­ing al­tru­is­tic with­out loss by en­abling him to give live coals to a neigh­bor with­out de­priv­ing him­self. The house­hold fire, which was at­tended by the mother or el­dest daugh­ter, was the first ed­u­ca­tor, re­quir­ing watch­ful­ness and de­pend­abil­ity. The early home was not a build­ing but the fam­ily gath­ered about the fire, the fam­ily hearth. When a son founded a new home, he car­ried a fire­brand from the fam­ily hearth.

• historically › first schools were clubs of unmarried men, women

70:7.14Pres­ently non­se­cret clubs made their ap­pear­ance when groups of un­mar­ried men and groups of un­at­tached women formed their sep­a­rate or­ga­ni­za­tions. These as­so­ci­a­tions were re­ally the first schools. And while men’s and women’s clubs were of­ten given to per­se­cut­ing each other, some ad­vanced tribes, af­ter con­tact with the Dala­ma­tia teach­ers, ex­per­i­mented with co­ed­u­ca­tion, hav­ing board­ing schools for both sexes.

• historically › compulsory in progressive civilization

70:9.97. Pro­vi­sion for ed­u­cat­ing and train­ing youth.

• of public opinion only safe way to accelerate civilization

71:2.7Pub­lic opin­ion, com­mon opin­ion, has al­ways de­layed so­ci­ety; nev­er­the­less, it is valu­able, for, while re­tard­ing so­cial evo­lu­tion, it does pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion. Ed­u­ca­tion of pub­lic opin­ion is the only safe and true method of ac­cel­er­at­ing civ­i­liza­tion; force is only a tem­po­rary ex­pe­di­ent, and cul­tural growth will in­creas­ingly ac­cel­er­ate as bul­lets give way to bal­lots. Pub­lic opin­ion, the mores, is the ba­sic and el­e­men­tal en­ergy in so­cial evo­lu­tion and state de­vel­op­ment, but to be of state value it must be non­vi­o­lent in ex­pres­sion.

• necessary for freedom
• warnings › without e., freedom usually does more harm than good

71:2.112. Free­dom of the mind. Un­less a free peo­ple are ed­u­cated—taught to think in­tel­li­gently and plan wisely—free­dom usu­ally does more harm than good.

• historically › compulsory in progressive civilization

71:4.75. Com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion.

• purpose of education › to acquire skill, wisdom, realize selfhood, attain spiritual values

71:7.1The en­dur­ing state is founded on cul­ture, dom­i­nated by ide­als, and mo­ti­vated by ser­vice. The pur­pose of ed­u­ca­tion should be ac­quire­ment of skill, pur­suit of wis­dom, re­al­iza­tion of self­hood, and at­tain­ment of spir­i­tual val­ues.

• method › must continue throughout life

71:7.2In the ideal state, ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues through­out life, and phi­los­o­phy some­time be­comes the chief pur­suit of its cit­i­zens. The cit­i­zens of such a com­mon­wealth pur­sue wis­dom as an en­hance­ment of in­sight into the sig­nif­i­cance of hu­man re­la­tions, the mean­ings of re­al­ity, the no­bil­ity of val­ues, the goals of liv­ing, and the glo­ries of cos­mic des­tiny.

• method › must become world-wide, idealistic, self-realizing, cosmic grasping

71:7.3Uran­tians should get a vi­sion of a new and higher cul­tural so­ci­ety. Ed­u­ca­tion will jump to new lev­els of value with the pass­ing of the purely profit-mo­ti­vated sys­tem of eco­nomics. Ed­u­ca­tion has too long been lo­cal­is­tic, mil­i­taris­tic, ego ex­alt­ing, and suc­cess seek­ing; it must even­tu­ally be­come world-wide, ide­al­is­tic, self-re­al­iz­ing, and cos­mic grasp­ing.

• method › teachers must be free beings, real leaders

71:7.4Ed­u­ca­tion re­cently passed from the con­trol of the clergy to that of lawyers and busi­ness­men. Even­tu­ally it must be given over to the philoso­phers and the sci­en­tists. Teach­ers must be free be­ings, real lead­ers, to the end that phi­los­o­phy, the search for wis­dom, may be­come the chief ed­u­ca­tional pur­suit.

• method › must continue throughout life

71:7.5Ed­u­ca­tion is the busi­ness of liv­ing; it must con­tinue through­out a life­time so that man­kind may grad­u­ally ex­pe­ri­ence the as­cend­ing lev­els of mor­tal wis­dom, which are:

71:7.61. The knowl­edge of things.

71:7.72. The re­al­iza­tion of mean­ings.

71:7.83. The ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ues.

71:7.94. The no­bil­ity of work—duty.

71:7.105. The mo­ti­va­tion of goals—moral­ity.

71:7.116. The love of ser­vice—char­ac­ter.

71:7.127. Cos­mic in­sight—spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment.

71:7.13And then, by means of these achieve­ments, many will as­cend to the mor­tal ul­ti­mate of mind at­tain­ment, God-con­scious­ness.

• method › must continue throughout life

71:8.75. The es­tab­lish­ment of uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion—learn­ing ex­tended from the cra­dle to the grave.

• method › much e. at home in continental nation

72:3.4These peo­ple re­gard the home as the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of their civ­i­liza­tion. It is ex­pected that the most valu­able part of a child’s ed­u­ca­tion and char­ac­ter train­ing will be se­cured from his par­ents and at home, and fa­thers de­vote al­most as much at­ten­tion to child cul­ture as do moth­ers.

72:4.1The ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem of this na­tion is com­pul­sory and co­ed­u­ca­tional in the pre­col­lege schools that the stu­dent at­tends from the ages of five to eigh­teen. These schools are vastly dif­fer­ent from those of Uran­tia. There are no class­rooms, only one study is pur­sued at a time, and af­ter the first three years all pupils be­come as­sis­tant teach­ers, in­struct­ing those be­low them. Books are used only to se­cure in­for­ma­tion that will as­sist in solv­ing the prob­lems aris­ing in the school shops and on the school farms. Much of the fur­ni­ture used on the con­ti­nent and the many me­chan­i­cal con­trivances—this is a great age of in­ven­tion and mech­a­niza­tion—are pro­duced in these shops. Ad­ja­cent to each shop is a work­ing li­brary where the stu­dent may con­sult the nec­es­sary ref­er­ence books. Agri­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture are also taught through­out the en­tire ed­u­ca­tional pe­riod on the ex­ten­sive farms ad­join­ing ev­ery lo­cal school.

72:4.2The fee­ble-minded are trained only in agri­cul­ture and an­i­mal hus­bandry, and are com­mit­ted for life to spe­cial cus­to­dial colonies where they are seg­re­gated by sex to pre­vent par­ent­hood, which is de­nied all sub­nor­mals. These re­stric­tive mea­sures have been in op­er­a­tion for sev­enty-five years; the com­mit­ment de­crees are handed down by the pa­ren­tal courts.

72:4.3Ev­ery­one takes one month’s va­ca­tion each year. The pre­col­lege schools are con­ducted for nine months out of the year of ten, the va­ca­tion be­ing spent with par­ents or friends in travel. This travel is a part of the adult-ed­u­ca­tion pro­gram and is con­tin­ued through­out a life­time, the funds for meet­ing such ex­penses be­ing ac­cu­mu­lated by the same meth­ods as those em­ployed in old-age in­sur­ance.

72:4.4One quar­ter of the school time is de­voted to play—com­pet­i­tive ath­let­ics—the pupils pro­gress­ing in these con­tests from the lo­cal, through the state and re­gional, and on to the na­tional tri­als of skill and prowess. Like­wise, the or­a­tor­i­cal and mu­si­cal con­tests, as well as those in sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, oc­cupy the at­ten­tion of stu­dents from the lower so­cial di­vi­sions on up to the con­tests for na­tional hon­ors.

• purpose of education › to make every pupil self-supporting

72:4.5The school gov­ern­ment is a replica of the na­tional gov­ern­ment with its three cor­re­lated branches, the teach­ing staff func­tion­ing as the third or ad­vi­sory leg­isla­tive di­vi­sion. The chief ob­ject of ed­u­ca­tion on this con­ti­nent is to make ev­ery pupil a self-sup­port­ing cit­i­zen.

72:4.6Ev­ery child grad­u­at­ing from the pre­col­lege school sys­tem at eigh­teen is a skilled ar­ti­san. Then be­gins the study of books and the pur­suit of spe­cial knowl­edge, ei­ther in the adult schools or in the col­leges. When a bril­liant stu­dent com­pletes his work ahead of sched­ule, he is granted an award of time and means where­with he may ex­e­cute some pet project of his own de­vis­ing. The en­tire ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem is de­signed to ad­e­quately train the in­di­vid­ual.

• historically › compulsory in continental nation

72:8.1In ad­di­tion to the ba­sic com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion pro­gram ex­tend­ing from the ages of five to eigh­teen, spe­cial schools are main­tained as fol­lows:

• historically › statesmanship schools in continental nation

72:8.21. States­man­ship schools. These schools are of three classes: na­tional, re­gional, and state. The pub­lic of­fices of the na­tion are grouped in four di­vi­sions. The first di­vi­sion of pub­lic trust per­tains prin­ci­pally to the na­tional ad­min­is­tra­tion, and all of­fice­hold­ers of this group must be grad­u­ates of both re­gional and na­tional schools of states­man­ship. In­di­vid­u­als may ac­cept po­lit­i­cal, elec­tive, or ap­pointive of­fice in the sec­ond di­vi­sion upon grad­u­at­ing from any one of the ten re­gional schools of states­man­ship; their trusts con­cern re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the re­gional ad­min­is­tra­tion and the state gov­ern­ments. Di­vi­sion three in­cludes state re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and such of­fi­cials are only re­quired to have state de­grees of states­man­ship. The fourth and last di­vi­sion of of­fice­hold­ers are not re­quired to hold states­man­ship de­grees, such of­fices be­ing wholly ap­pointive. They rep­re­sent mi­nor po­si­tions of as­sis­tantship, sec­re­tary­ships, and tech­ni­cal trusts which are dis­charged by the var­i­ous learned pro­fes­sions func­tion­ing in gov­ern­men­tal ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ties.

72:8.3Judges of the mi­nor and state courts hold de­grees from the state schools of states­man­ship. Judges of the ju­ris­dic­tional tri­bu­nals of so­cial, ed­u­ca­tional, and in­dus­trial mat­ters hold de­grees from the re­gional schools. Judges of the fed­eral su­preme court must hold de­grees from all these schools of states­man­ship.

72:8.42. Schools of phi­los­o­phy. These schools are af­fil­i­ated with the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy and are more or less as­so­ci­ated with re­li­gion as a pub­lic func­tion.

72:8.53. In­sti­tu­tions of sci­ence. These tech­ni­cal schools are co-or­di­nated with in­dus­try rather than with the ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem and are ad­min­is­tered un­der fif­teen di­vi­sions.

72:8.64. Pro­fes­sional train­ing schools. These spe­cial in­sti­tu­tions pro­vide the tech­ni­cal train­ing for the var­i­ous learned pro­fes­sions, twelve in num­ber.

• historically › compulsory in continental nation

72:8.75. Mil­i­tary and naval schools. Near the na­tional head­quar­ters and at the twenty-five coastal mil­i­tary cen­ters are main­tained those in­sti­tu­tions de­voted to the mil­i­tary train­ing of vol­un­teer cit­i­zens from eigh­teen to thirty years of age. Pa­ren­tal con­sent is re­quired be­fore twenty-five in or­der to gain en­trance to these schools.

• historically › of children of Adam and Eve
• method › being pupil-teachers

74:6.7The Adamic chil­dren at­tended their own schools un­til they were six­teen, the younger be­ing taught by the el­der. The lit­tle folks changed ac­tiv­i­ties ev­ery thirty min­utes, the older ev­ery hour. And it was cer­tainly a new sight on Uran­tia to ob­serve these chil­dren of Adam and Eve at play, joy­ous and ex­hil­a­rat­ing ac­tiv­ity just for the sheer fun of it. The play and hu­mor of the pres­ent-day races are largely de­rived from the Adamic stock. The Adamites all had a great ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mu­sic as well as a keen sense of hu­mor.

• historically › of children of Adam and Eve
• method › being pupil-teachers

74:7.1The chil­dren of Adam, ex­cept for four years’ at­ten­dance at the west­ern schools, lived and worked in the “east of Eden.” They were trained in­tel­lec­tu­ally un­til they were six­teen in ac­cor­dance with the meth­ods of the Je­ru­sem schools. From six­teen to twenty they were taught in the Uran­tia schools at the other end of the Gar­den, serv­ing there also as teach­ers in the lower grades.

• historically › purpose of Garden schools was socialization

74:7.2The en­tire pur­pose of the west­ern school sys­tem of the Gar­den was so­cial­iza­tion. The forenoon pe­ri­ods of re­cess were de­voted to prac­ti­cal hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture, the af­ter­noon pe­ri­ods to com­pet­i­tive play. The evenings were em­ployed in so­cial in­ter­course and the cul­ti­va­tion of per­sonal friend­ships. Re­li­gious and sex­ual train­ing were re­garded as the prov­ince of the home, the duty of par­ents.

74:7.3The teach­ing in these schools in­cluded in­struc­tion re­gard­ing:

74:7.41. Health and the care of the body.

74:7.52. The golden rule, the stan­dard of so­cial in­ter­course.

74:7.63. The re­la­tion of in­di­vid­ual rights to group rights and com­mu­nity obli­ga­tions.

74:7.74. His­tory and cul­ture of the var­i­ous earth races.

74:7.85. Meth­ods of ad­vanc­ing and im­prov­ing world trade.

74:7.96. Co-or­di­na­tion of con­flict­ing du­ties and emo­tions.

74:7.107. The cul­ti­va­tion of play, hu­mor, and com­pet­i­tive sub­sti­tutes for phys­i­cal fight­ing.

74:7.11The schools, in fact ev­ery ac­tiv­ity of the Gar­den, were al­ways open to vis­i­tors. Un­armed ob­servers were freely ad­mit­ted to Eden for short vis­its. To so­journ in the Gar­den a Uran­tian had to be “adopted.” He re­ceived in­struc­tions in the plan and pur­pose of the Adamic be­stowal, sig­ni­fied his in­ten­tion to ad­here to this mis­sion, and then made dec­la­ra­tion of loy­alty to the so­cial rule of Adam and the spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• purpose of education › indispensable for getting most out of a good inheritance

76:2.6The ob­ser­va­tion of Abel’s con­duct es­tab­lishes the value of en­vi­ron­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as fac­tors in char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment. Abel had an ideal in­her­i­tance, and hered­ity lies at the bot­tom of all char­ac­ter; but the in­flu­ence of an in­fe­rior en­vi­ron­ment vir­tu­ally neu­tral­ized this mag­nif­i­cent in­her­i­tance. Abel, es­pe­cially dur­ing his younger years, was greatly in­flu­enced by his un­fa­vor­able sur­round­ings. He would have be­come an en­tirely dif­fer­ent per­son had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his su­perb in­her­i­tance would then have shown it­self. While a good en­vi­ron­ment can­not con­tribute much to­ward re­ally over­com­ing the char­ac­ter hand­i­caps of a base hered­ity, a bad en­vi­ron­ment can very ef­fec­tively spoil an ex­cel­lent in­her­i­tance, at least dur­ing the younger years of life. Good so­cial en­vi­ron­ment and proper ed­u­ca­tion are in­dis­pens­able soil and at­mo­sphere for get­ting the most out of a good in­her­i­tance.

• historically › methods of Sethites never surpassed

76:3.10And when think­ing of the Sethite priest­hood, do not con­fuse those high-minded and no­ble teach­ers of health and re­li­gion, those true ed­u­ca­tors, with the de­based and com­mer­cial priest­hoods of the later tribes and sur­round­ing na­tions. Their re­li­gious con­cepts of De­ity and the uni­verse were ad­vanced and more or less ac­cu­rate, their health pro­vi­sions were, for their time, ex­cel­lent, and their meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion have never since been sur­passed.

• historically › in China

79:6.11This wor­ship of truth was provoca­tive of re­search and fear­less ex­plo­ration of the laws of na­ture and the po­ten­tials of man­kind. The Chi­nese of even six thou­sand years ago were still keen stu­dents and ag­gres­sive in their pur­suit of truth.

• historically › in China

79:8.7Soon de­vel­op­ments in writ­ing, to­gether with the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, con­tributed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge on a pre­vi­ously un­equaled scale. But the cum­ber­some na­ture of the ideo­graphic writ­ing sys­tem placed a nu­mer­i­cal limit upon the learned classes de­spite the early ap­pear­ance of print­ing. And above all else, the pro­cess of so­cial stan­dard­iza­tion and re­li­gio-philo­sophic dogma­ti­za­tion con­tin­ued apace. The re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion be­came fur­ther com­pli­cated by a flood of su­per­sti­tions in­volv­ing na­ture wor­ship, but lin­ger­ing ves­tiges of a real con­cept of God re­mained pre­served in the im­pe­rial wor­ship of Shang-ti.

• warnings › has not kept pace with expanding social structure

81:6.25The great­est twen­ti­eth-cen­tury in­flu­ences con­tribut­ing to the fur­ther­ance of civ­i­liza­tion and the ad­vance­ment of cul­ture are the marked in­crease in world travel and the un­par­al­leled im­prove­ments in meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the im­prove­ment in ed­u­ca­tion has not kept pace with the ex­pand­ing so­cial struc­ture; nei­ther has the mod­ern ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ethics de­vel­oped in cor­re­spon­dence with growth along more purely in­tel­lec­tual and sci­en­tific lines. And mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion is at a stand­still in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment and the safe­guard­ing of the home in­sti­tu­tion.

• method › train everyone in commonplace trades

81:6.32It is not enough to train men for work; in a com­plex so­ci­ety there must also be pro­vided ef­fi­cient meth­ods of place find­ing. Be­fore train­ing cit­i­zens in the highly spe­cial­ized tech­niques of earn­ing a liv­ing, they should be trained in one or more meth­ods of com­mon­place la­bor, trades or call­ings which could be uti­lized when they were tran­siently un­em­ployed in their spe­cial­ized work. No civ­i­liza­tion can sur­vive the long-time har­bor­ing of large classes of un­em­ployed. In time, even the best of cit­i­zens will be­come dis­torted and de­mor­al­ized by ac­cept­ing sup­port from the pub­lic trea­sury. Even pri­vate char­ity be­comes per­ni­cious when long ex­tended to able-bod­ied cit­i­zens.

• method › home building should be central to

84:0.1Ma­te­rial ne­ces­sity founded mar­riage, sex hunger em­bel­lished it, re­li­gion sanc­tioned and ex­alted it, the state de­manded and reg­u­lated it, while in later times evolv­ing love is be­gin­ning to jus­tify and glo­rify mar­riage as the an­ces­tor and cre­ator of civ­i­liza­tion’s most use­ful and sub­lime in­sti­tu­tion, the home. And home build­ing should be the cen­ter and essence of all ed­u­ca­tional ef­fort.

• growth indicated by enhancement of ideals, values

100:1.3Give ev­ery de­vel­op­ing child a chance to grow his own re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence; do not force a ready-made adult ex­pe­ri­ence upon him. Re­mem­ber, year-by-year prog­ress through an es­tab­lished ed­u­ca­tional regime does not nec­es­sar­ily mean in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress, much less spir­i­tual growth. En­large­ment of vo­cab­u­lary does not sig­nify de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter. Growth is not truly in­di­cated by mere prod­ucts but rather by prog­ress. Real ed­u­ca­tional growth is in­di­cated by en­hance­ment of ide­als, in­creased ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ues, new mean­ings of val­ues, and aug­mented loy­alty to su­preme val­ues.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

100:2.1Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment de­pends, first, on the main­te­nance of a liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with true spir­i­tual forces and, sec­ond, on the con­tin­u­ous bear­ing of spir­i­tual fruit: yield­ing the min­istry to one’s fel­lows of that which has been re­ceived from one’s spir­i­tual bene­fac­tors. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is pred­i­cated on in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual pov­erty cou­pled with the self-con­scious­ness of per­fec­tion-hunger, the de­sire to know God and be like him, the whole­hearted pur­pose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• spiritual progress not dependent upon

101:2.15The re­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion never has been, and never will be, de­pen­dent on great learn­ing or clever logic. It is spir­i­tual in­sight, and that is just the rea­son why some of the world’s great­est re­li­gious teach­ers, even the proph­ets, have some­times pos­sessed so lit­tle of the wis­dom of the world. Re­li­gious faith is avail­able alike to the learned and the un­learned.

• warnings › blindness by confusion of complex learning

102:0.2But such is not man’s end and eter­nal des­tiny; such a vi­sion is but the cry of de­spair ut­tered by some wan­der­ing soul who has be­come lost in spir­i­tual dark­ness, and who bravely strug­gles on in the face of the mech­a­nis­tic soph­ist­ries of a ma­te­rial phi­los­o­phy, blinded by the con­fu­sion and dis­tor­tion of a com­plex learn­ing. And all this doom of dark­ness and all this des­tiny of de­spair are for­ever dis­pelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most hum­ble and un­learned of God’s chil­dren on earth.

• religious attainment handicapped by lack of

102:3.1In­tel­lec­tual de­fi­ciency or ed­u­ca­tional pov­erty un­avoid­ably hand­i­caps higher re­li­gious at­tain­ment be­cause such an im­pov­er­ished en­vi­ron­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture robs re­li­gion of its chief chan­nel of philo­sophic con­tact with the world of sci­en­tific knowl­edge. The in­tel­lec­tual fac­tors of re­li­gion are im­por­tant, but their overde­vel­op­ment is like­wise some­times very hand­i­cap­ping and em­bar­rass­ing. Re­li­gion must con­tin­u­ally la­bor un­der a para­dox­i­cal ne­ces­sity: the ne­ces­sity of mak­ing ef­fec­tive use of thought while at the same time dis­count­ing the spir­i­tual ser­vice­able­ness of all think­ing.

• method › pressure only negatively helpful

103:5.11But man is not saved or en­no­bled by pres­sure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolv­ing soul. Pres­sure may de­form the per­son­al­ity, but it never stim­u­lates growth. Even ed­u­ca­tional pres­sure is only neg­a­tively help­ful in that it may aid in the pre­ven­tion of dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences. Spir­i­tual growth is great­est where all ex­ter­nal pres­sures are at a min­i­mum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is free­dom.” Man de­vel­ops best when the pres­sures of home, com­mu­nity, church, and state are least. But this must not be con­strued as mean­ing that there is no place in a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety for home, so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, church, and state.

• mortal career is an e.

111:3.5The mor­tal ca­reer, the soul’s evo­lu­tion, is not so much a pro­ba­tion as an ed­u­ca­tion. Faith in the sur­vival of su­preme val­ues is the core of re­li­gion; gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in the union of su­preme val­ues and cos­mic mean­ings as a re­al­iza­tion of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• spiritual progress not dependent upon

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

• Jesus’ education › most valuable, secured from parents

123:2.3Je­sus was five years old in Au­gust of this year, and we will, there­fore, re­fer to this as his fifth (cal­en­dar) year of life. In this year, 2 B.C., a lit­tle more than one month be­fore his fifth birth­day an­niver­sary, Je­sus was made very happy by the com­ing of his sis­ter Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11. Dur­ing the evening of the fol­low­ing day Je­sus had a long talk with his fa­ther con­cern­ing the man­ner in which var­i­ous groups of liv­ing things are born into the world as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als. The most valu­able part of Je­sus’ early ed­u­ca­tion was se­cured from his par­ents in an­swer to his thought­ful and search­ing in­quiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in tak­ing pains and spend­ing time an­swer­ing the boy’s nu­mer­ous ques­tions. From the time Je­sus was five years old un­til he was ten, he was one con­tin­u­ous ques­tion mark. While Joseph and Mary could not al­ways an­swer his ques­tions, they never failed fully to dis­cuss his in­quiries and in ev­ery other pos­si­ble way to as­sist him in his ef­forts to reach a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which his alert mind had sug­gested.

• historically › compulsory for Jews

123:2.5There were few homes in the gen­tile world of those days that could give a child a bet­ter in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and re­li­gious train­ing than the Jew­ish homes of Gal­i­lee. These Jews had a sys­tem­atic pro­gram for rear­ing and ed­u­cat­ing their chil­dren. They di­vided a child’s life into seven stages:

123:2.61. The new­born child, the first to the eighth day.

123:2.72. The suck­ling child.

123:2.83. The weaned child.

123:2.94. The pe­riod of de­pen­dence on the mother, last­ing up to the end of the fifth year.

123:2.105. The be­gin­ning in­de­pen­dence of the child and, with sons, the fa­ther as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for their ed­u­ca­tion.

123:2.116. The ado­les­cent youths and maid­ens.

123:2.127. The young men and the young women.

123:2.13It was the cus­tom of the Galilean Jews for the mother to bear the re­spon­si­bil­ity for a child’s train­ing un­til the fifth birth­day, and then, if the child were a boy, to hold the fa­ther re­spon­si­ble for the lad’s ed­u­ca­tion from that time on. This year, there­fore, Je­sus en­tered upon the fifth stage of a Galilean Jew­ish child’s ca­reer, and ac­cord­ingly on Au­gust 21, 2 B.C., Mary for­mally turned him over to Joseph for fur­ther in­struc­tion.

• Jesus’ education › early schooling in Nazareth

123:2.14Though Joseph was now as­sum­ing the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­ity for Je­sus’ in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion, his mother still in­ter­ested her­self in his home train­ing. She taught him to know and care for the vines and flow­ers grow­ing about the gar­den walls which com­pletely sur­rounded the home plot. She also pro­vided on the roof of the house (the sum­mer bed­room) shal­low boxes of sand in which Je­sus worked out maps and did much of his early prac­tice at writ­ing Ara­maic, Greek, and later on, He­brew, for in time he learned to read, write, and speak, flu­ently, all three lan­guages.

123:5.1Je­sus was now seven years old, the age when Jew­ish chil­dren were sup­posed to be­gin their for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in the syn­a­gogue schools. Ac­cord­ingly, in Au­gust of this year he en­tered upon his event­ful school life at Naz­a­reth. Al­ready this lad was a flu­ent reader, writer, and speaker of two lan­guages, Ara­maic and Greek. He was now to ac­quaint him­self with the task of learn­ing to read, write, and speak the He­brew lan­guage. And he was truly ea­ger for the new school life which was ahead of him.

123:5.2For three years—un­til he was ten—he at­tended the el­e­men­tary school of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. For these three years he stud­ied the rudi­ments of the Book of the Law as it was re­corded in the He­brew tongue. For the fol­low­ing three years he stud­ied in the ad­vanced school and com­mit­ted to mem­ory, by the method of re­peat­ing aloud, the deeper teach­ings of the sa­cred law. He grad­u­ated from this school of the syn­a­gogue dur­ing his thir­teenth year and was turned over to his par­ents by the syn­a­gogue rulers as an ed­u­cated “son of the com­mand­ment”—hence­forth a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen of the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael, all of which en­tailed his at­ten­dance at the Passovers in Je­ru­sa­lem; ac­cord­ingly, he at­tended his first Pass­over that year in com­pany with his fa­ther and mother.

123:5.3At Naz­a­reth the pupils sat on the floor in a semi­cir­cle, while their teacher, the chazan, an of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue, sat fac­ing them. Be­gin­ning with the Book of Leviti­cus, they passed on to the study of the other books of the law, fol­lowed by the study of the Proph­ets and the Psalms. The Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue pos­sessed a com­plete copy of the Scrip­tures in He­brew. Noth­ing but the Scrip­tures was stud­ied prior to the twelfth year. In the sum­mer months the hours for school were greatly short­ened.

123:5.4Je­sus early be­came a mas­ter of He­brew, and as a young man, when no vis­i­tor of promi­nence hap­pened to be so­journ­ing in Naz­a­reth, he would of­ten be asked to read the He­brew scrip­tures to the faith­ful as­sem­bled in the syn­a­gogue at the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­vices.

123:5.5These syn­a­gogue schools, of course, had no text­books. In teach­ing, the chazan would ut­ter a state­ment while the pupils would in uni­son re­peat it af­ter him. When hav­ing ac­cess to the writ­ten books of the law, the stu­dent learned his les­son by read­ing aloud and by con­stant rep­e­ti­tion.

123:5.6Next, in ad­di­tion to his more for­mal school­ing, Je­sus be­gan to make con­tact with hu­man na­ture from the four quar­ters of the earth as men from many lands passed in and out of his fa­ther’s re­pair shop. When he grew older, he min­gled freely with the car­a­vans as they tar­ried near the spring for rest and nour­ish­ment. Be­ing a flu­ent speaker of Greek, he had lit­tle trou­ble in con­vers­ing with the ma­jor­ity of the car­a­van trav­el­ers and con­duc­tors.

123:5.7Naz­a­reth was a car­a­van way sta­tion and cross­roads of travel and largely gen­tile in pop­u­la­tion; at the same time it was widely known as a cen­ter of lib­eral in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Jew­ish tra­di­tional law. In Gal­i­lee the Jews min­gled more freely with the gen­tiles than was their prac­tice in Judea. And of all the cities of Gal­i­lee, the Jews of Naz­a­reth were most lib­eral in their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the so­cial re­stric­tions based on the fears of con­tam­i­na­tion as a re­sult of con­tact with the gen­tiles. And these con­di­tions gave rise to the com­mon say­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?”

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

123:5.8Je­sus re­ceived his moral train­ing and spir­i­tual cul­ture chiefly in his own home. He se­cured much of his in­tel­lec­tual and the­o­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion from the chazan. But his real ed­u­ca­tion—that equip­ment of mind and heart for the ac­tual test of grap­pling with the dif­fi­cult prob­lems of life—he ob­tained by min­gling with his fel­low men. It was this close as­so­ci­a­tion with his fel­low men, young and old, Jew and gen­tile, that af­forded him the op­por­tu­nity to know the hu­man race. Je­sus was highly ed­u­cated in that he thor­oughly un­der­stood men and de­vot­edly loved them.

123:5.9Through­out his years at the syn­a­gogue he was a bril­liant stu­dent, pos­sess­ing a great ad­van­tage since he was con­ver­sant with three lan­guages. The Naz­a­reth chazan, on the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ fin­ish­ing the course in his school, re­marked to Joseph that he feared he “had learned more from Je­sus’ search­ing ques­tions” than he had “been able to teach the lad.”

123:5.10Through­out his course of study Je­sus learned much and de­rived great in­spi­ra­tion from the reg­u­lar Sab­bath ser­mons in the syn­a­gogue. It was cus­tom­ary to ask dis­tin­guished vis­i­tors, stop­ping over the Sab­bath in Naz­a­reth, to ad­dress the syn­a­gogue. As Je­sus grew up, he heard many great thinkers of the en­tire Jew­ish world ex­pound their views, and many also who were hardly or­tho­dox Jews since the syn­a­gogue of Naz­a­reth was an ad­vanced and lib­eral cen­ter of He­brew thought and cul­ture.

• historically › compulsory for Jews

123:5.11When en­ter­ing school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just in­au­gu­rated a com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion law), it was cus­tom­ary for the pupils to choose their “birth­day text,” a sort of golden rule to guide them through­out their stud­ies, one upon which they of­ten ex­pa­ti­ated at their grad­u­a­tion when thir­teen years old. The text which Je­sus chose was from the Prophet Isa­iah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free.”

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

123:5.13From four di­rec­tions Je­sus could ob­serve the car­a­van trains as they wended their way in and out of Naz­a­reth, and to the south he could over­look the broad and fer­tile plain coun­try of Es­draelon, stretch­ing off to­ward Mount Gil­boa and Samaria.

• Jesus’ education
• Jesus’ education › involved sympathetic contact with nature

123:5.14When they did not climb the heights to view the dis­tant land­scape, they strolled through the coun­try­side and stud­ied na­ture in her var­i­ous moods in ac­cor­dance with the sea­sons. Je­sus’ ear­li­est train­ing, aside from that of the home hearth, had to do with a rev­er­ent and sym­pa­thetic con­tact with na­ture.

123:5.15Be­fore he was eight years of age, he was known to all the moth­ers and young women of Naz­a­reth, who had met him and talked with him at the spring, which was not far from his home, and which was one of the so­cial cen­ters of con­tact and gos­sip for the en­tire town. This year Je­sus learned to milk the fam­ily cow and care for the other an­i­mals. Dur­ing this and the fol­low­ing year he also learned to make cheese and to weave. When he was ten years of age, he was an ex­pert loom op­er­a­tor. It was about this time that Je­sus and the neigh­bor boy Ja­cob be­came great friends of the pot­ter who worked near the flow­ing spring; and as they watched Nathan’s deft fin­gers mold the clay on the pot­ter’s wheel, many times both of them de­ter­mined to be pot­ters when they grew up. Nathan was very fond of the lads and of­ten gave them clay to play with, seek­ing to stim­u­late their cre­ative imag­i­na­tions by sug­gest­ing com­pet­i­tive ef­forts in mod­el­ing var­i­ous ob­jects and an­i­mals.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

124:3.3Je­sus spent con­sid­er­able time at the car­a­van sup­ply shop, and by con­vers­ing with the trav­el­ers from all parts of the world, he ac­quired a store of in­for­ma­tion about in­ter­na­tional af­fairs that was amaz­ing, con­sid­er­ing his age. This was the last year in which he en­joyed much free play and youth­ful joy­ous­ness. From this time on dif­fi­cul­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties rapidly mul­ti­plied in the life of this youth.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

124:4.1This was an event­ful year in Je­sus’ life. He con­tin­ued to make prog­ress at school and was in­de­fati­ga­ble in his study of na­ture, while in­creas­ingly he pros­e­cuted his study of the meth­ods whereby men make a liv­ing. He be­gan do­ing reg­u­lar work in the home car­pen­ter shop and was per­mit­ted to man­age his own earn­ings, a very un­usual ar­range­ment to ob­tain in a Jew­ish fam­ily. This year he also learned the wis­dom of keep­ing such mat­ters a se­cret in the fam­ily. He was be­com­ing con­scious of the way in which he had caused trou­ble in the vil­lage, and hence­forth he be­came in­creas­ingly dis­creet in con­ceal­ing ev­ery­thing which might cause him to be re­garded as dif­fer­ent from his fel­lows.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

125:2.12Af­ter all, Pass­over week had been a great event in Je­sus’ life. He had en­joyed the op­por­tu­nity of meet­ing scores of boys about his own age, fel­low can­di­dates for the con­se­cra­tion, and he uti­lized such con­tacts as a means of learn­ing how peo­ple lived in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, Tur­kes­tan, and Parthia, as well as in the Far-West­ern prov­inces of Rome. He was al­ready fairly con­ver­sant with the way in which the youth of Egypt and other re­gions near Pales­tine grew up. There were thou­sands of young peo­ple in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, and the Naz­a­reth lad per­son­ally met, and more or less ex­ten­sively in­ter­viewed, more than one hun­dred and fifty. He was par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in those who hailed from the Far-East­ern and the re­mote West­ern coun­tries. As a re­sult of these con­tacts the lad be­gan to en­ter­tain a de­sire to travel about the world for the pur­pose of learn­ing how the var­i­ous groups of his fel­low men toiled for their liveli­hood.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

126:5.2Al­ready had this youth well-nigh en­com­passed the com­pre­hen­sion of how men lived in his day. And how well he un­der­stood life in the home, field, and work­shop is shown by his sub­se­quent teach­ings, which so re­pletely re­veal his in­ti­mate con­tact with all phases of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• method › best is “come with me”
• method › Jesus invariably positively exhorted

127:4.2By the be­gin­ning of this year Je­sus had fully won his mother to the ac­cep­tance of his meth­ods of child train­ing—the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion to do good in the place of the older Jew­ish method of for­bid­ding to do evil. In his home and through­out his pub­lic-teach­ing ca­reer Je­sus in­vari­ably em­ployed the pos­i­tive form of ex­hor­ta­tion. Al­ways and ev­ery­where did he say, “You shall do this—you ought to do that.” Never did he em­ploy the neg­a­tive mode of teach­ing de­rived from the an­cient taboos. He re­frained from plac­ing em­pha­sis on evil by for­bid­ding it, while he ex­alted the good by com­mand­ing its per­for­mance. Prayer time in this house­hold was the oc­ca­sion for dis­cussing any­thing and ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to the wel­fare of the fam­ily.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

128:2.5Liv­ing much of the time in Sep­pho­ris for six months af­forded Je­sus a new op­por­tu­nity to be­come bet­ter ac­quainted with the gen­tile view­point of life. He worked with gen­tiles, lived with gen­tiles, and in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner did he make a close and painstak­ing study of their habits of liv­ing and of the gen­tile mind.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

128:3.4Si­mon greatly en­joyed his visit to Je­ru­sa­lem. He was duly re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael at the Pass­over con­se­cra­tion of the new sons of the com­mand­ment. While Si­mon at­tended the Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus min­gled with the throngs of vis­i­tors and en­gaged in many in­ter­est­ing per­sonal con­fer­ences with nu­mer­ous gen­tile pros­e­lytes.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

129:1.7Through­out this year Je­sus built boats and con­tin­ued to ob­serve how men lived on earth. Fre­quently he would go down to visit at the car­a­van sta­tion, Ca­per­naum be­ing on the di­rect travel route from Da­mas­cus to the south. Ca­per­naum was a strong Ro­man mil­i­tary post, and the gar­ri­son’s com­mand­ing of­fi­cer was a gen­tile be­liever in Yah­weh, “a de­vout man,” as the Jews were wont to des­ig­nate such pros­e­lytes. This of­fi­cer be­longed to a wealthy Ro­man fam­ily, and he took it upon him­self to build a beau­ti­ful syn­a­gogue in Ca­per­naum, which had been pre­sented to the Jews a short time be­fore Je­sus came to live with Zeb­e­dee. Je­sus con­ducted the ser­vices in this new syn­a­gogue more than half the time this year, and some of the car­a­van peo­ple who chanced to at­tend re­mem­bered him as the car­pen­ter from Naz­a­reth.

• Jesus’ education › studied 5 nights per week

129:1.9At the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue he found many new books in the li­brary chests, and he spent at least five evenings a week at in­tense study. One evening he de­voted to so­cial life with the older folks, and one evening he spent with the young peo­ple. There was some­thing gra­cious and in­spir­ing about the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus which in­vari­ably at­tracted young peo­ple. He al­ways made them feel at ease in his pres­ence. Per­haps his great se­cret in get­ting along with them con­sisted in the two­fold fact that he was al­ways in­ter­ested in what they were do­ing, while he sel­dom of­fered them ad­vice un­less they asked for it.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

129:3.7The Son of Man, dur­ing the time and through the ex­pe­ri­ences of this tour of the Ro­man world, prac­ti­cally com­pleted his ed­u­ca­tional con­tact-train­ing with the di­ver­si­fied peo­ples of the world of his day and gen­er­a­tion. By the time of his re­turn to Naz­a­reth, through the medium of this travel-train­ing he had just about learned how man lived and wrought out his ex­is­tence on Uran­tia.

129:3.8The real pur­pose of his trip around the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin was to know men. He came very close to hun­dreds of hu­mankind on this jour­ney. He met and loved all man­ner of men, rich and poor, high and low, black and white, ed­u­cated and un­e­d­u­cated, cul­tured and un­cul­tured, an­i­mal­is­tic and spir­i­tual, re­li­gious and ir­re­li­gious, moral and im­moral.

• Jesus’ education › obtained by mingling with fellow men

130:0.5On this Med­i­ter­ra­nean tour Je­sus spent about half of each day teach­ing Ga­nid and act­ing as in­ter­preter dur­ing Gonod’s busi­ness con­fer­ences and so­cial con­tacts. The re­main­der of each day, which was at his dis­posal, he de­voted to mak­ing those close per­sonal con­tacts with his fel­low men, those in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tions with the mor­tals of the realm, which so char­ac­ter­ized his ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing these years that just pre­ceded his pub­lic min­istry.

130:0.6From first­hand ob­ser­va­tion and ac­tual con­tact Je­sus ac­quainted him­self with the higher ma­te­rial and in­tel­lec­tual civ­i­liza­tion of the Oc­ci­dent and the Lev­ant; from Gonod and his bril­liant son he learned a great deal about the civ­i­liza­tion and cul­ture of In­dia and China, for Gonod, him­self a cit­i­zen of In­dia, had made three ex­ten­sive trips to the em­pire of the yel­low race.

• method › teachers maintain integrity by remaining learners

130:3.7Je­sus and Ga­nid spent much time in the mu­seum dur­ing their stay in Alexan­dria. This mu­seum was not a col­lec­tion of rare ob­jects but rather a uni­ver­sity of fine art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Learned pro­fes­sors here gave daily lec­tures, and in those times this was the in­tel­lec­tual cen­ter of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. Day by day Je­sus in­ter­preted the lec­tures to Ga­nid; one day dur­ing the sec­ond week the young man ex­claimed: “Teacher Joshua, you know more than these pro­fes­sors; you should stand up and tell them the great things you have told me; they are be­fogged by much think­ing. I shall speak to my fa­ther and have him ar­range it.” Je­sus smiled, say­ing: “You are an ad­mir­ing pupil, but these teach­ers are not minded that you and I should in­struct them. The pride of un­spir­i­tu­al­ized learn­ing is a treach­er­ous thing in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The true teacher main­tains his in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity by ever re­main­ing a learner.”

• apostles studied 3 hours every evening

137:6.5Je­sus in­structed them to take up their reg­u­lar du­ties un­til “the hour of the king­dom comes.” And to en­cour­age them, he set an ex­am­ple by go­ing back reg­u­larly to work in the boat­shop. In ex­plain­ing that they should spend three hours ev­ery evening in study and prepa­ra­tion for their fu­ture work, Je­sus fur­ther said: “We will all re­main here­about un­til the Fa­ther bids me call you. Each of you must now re­turn to his ac­cus­tomed work just as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Tell no man about me and re­mem­ber that my king­dom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Fa­ther will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the coun­cils of the king­dom. You are now my friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to be­come my per­sonal as­so­ciates. Be pa­tient, be gen­tle. Be ever obe­di­ent to the Fa­ther’s will. Make your­selves ready for the call of the king­dom. While you will ex­pe­ri­ence great joy in the ser­vice of my Fa­ther, you should also be pre­pared for trou­ble, for I warn you that it will be only through much tribu­la­tion that many will en­ter the king­dom. But those who have found the king­dom, their joy will be full, and they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not en­ter­tain false hope; the world will stum­ble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully per­ceive what I am un­fold­ing to your con­fused minds. Make no mis­take; we go forth to la­bor for a gen­er­a­tion of sign seek­ers. They will de­mand won­der-work­ing as the proof that I am sent by my Fa­ther, and they will be slow to rec­og­nize in the rev­e­la­tion of my Fa­ther’s love the cre­den­tials of my mis­sion.”

• apostles studied 3 hours every evening
• warnings › confusion precipitated by overteaching

137:7.14As they thus tar­ried be­fore em­bark­ing on their ac­tive pub­lic preach­ing, Je­sus and the seven spent two evenings each week at the syn­a­gogue in the study of the He­brew scrip­tures. In later years af­ter sea­sons of in­tense pub­lic work, the apos­tles looked back upon these four months as the most pre­cious and prof­itable of all their as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Je­sus taught these men all they could as­sim­i­late. He did not make the mis­take of overteach­ing them. He did not pre­cip­i­tate con­fu­sion by the pre­sen­ta­tion of truth too far be­yond their ca­pac­ity to com­pre­hend.

• method › ascendant plan is teaching those just behind

138:6.1The next week was de­voted to a pro­gram of in­tense train­ing. Each day the six new apos­tles were put in the hands of their re­spec­tive nom­i­na­tors for a thor­ough­go­ing re­view of all they had learned and ex­pe­ri­enced in prepa­ra­tion for the work of the king­dom. The older apos­tles care­fully re­viewed, for the ben­e­fit of the younger six, Je­sus’ teach­ings up to that hour. Evenings they all as­sem­bled in Zeb­e­dee’s gar­den to re­ceive Je­sus’ in­struc­tion.

• apostles not made alike by schooling

139:0.3Do not make the mis­take of re­gard­ing the apos­tles as be­ing al­to­gether ig­no­rant and un­learned. All of them, ex­cept the Al­pheus twins, were grad­u­ates of the syn­a­gogue schools, hav­ing been thor­oughly trained in the He­brew scrip­tures and in much of the cur­rent knowl­edge of that day. Seven were grad­u­ates of the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue schools, and there were no bet­ter Jew­ish schools in all Gal­i­lee.

139:0.4When your rec­ords re­fer to these mes­sen­gers of the king­dom as be­ing “ig­no­rant and un­learned,” it was in­tended to con­vey the idea that they were lay­men, un­learned in the lore of the rab­bis and un­trained in the meth­ods of rab­bini­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Scrip­tures. They were lack­ing in so-called higher ed­u­ca­tion. In mod­ern times they would cer­tainly be con­sid­ered un­e­d­u­cated, and in some cir­cles of so­ci­ety even un­cul­tured. One thing is cer­tain: They had not all been put through the same rigid and stereo­typed ed­u­ca­tional cur­ricu­lum. From ado­les­cence on they had en­joyed sep­a­rate ex­pe­ri­ences of learn­ing how to live.

• method › best is “come with me”

139:5.8The apos­tolic stew­ard was not a good pub­lic speaker, but he was a very per­sua­sive and suc­cess­ful per­sonal worker. He was not eas­ily dis­cour­aged; he was a plod­der and very tena­cious in any­thing he un­der­took. He had that great and rare gift of say­ing, “Come.” When his first con­vert, Na­than­iel, wanted to ar­gue about the mer­its and de­mer­its of Je­sus and Naz­a­reth, Philip’s ef­fec­tive re­ply was, “Come and see.” He was not a dog­matic preacher who ex­horted his hear­ers to “Go”—do this and do that. He met all sit­u­a­tions as they arose in his work with “Come”—“come with me; I will show you the way.” And that is al­ways the ef­fec­tive tech­nique in all forms and phases of teach­ing. Even par­ents may learn from Philip the bet­ter way of say­ing to their chil­dren not “Go do this and go do that,” but rather, “Come with us while we show and share with you the bet­ter way.”

• purpose of education › discovering better methods of gratifying urges

140:4.10Ed­u­ca­tion should be a tech­nique of learn­ing (dis­cov­er­ing) the bet­ter meth­ods of grat­i­fy­ing our nat­u­ral and in­her­ited urges, and hap­pi­ness is the re­sult­ing to­tal of these en­hanced tech­niques of emo­tional sat­is­fac­tions. Hap­pi­ness is lit­tle de­pen­dent on en­vi­ron­ment, though pleas­ing sur­round­ings may greatly con­tribute thereto.

• method › wise fathers carefully plan children’s e.

142:7.83. Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing. Wise fa­thers care­fully plan for the ed­u­ca­tion and ad­e­quate train­ing of their sons and daugh­ters. When young they are pre­pared for the greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of later life.

• method › by learning and doing

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

• method › Jesus deplored overspecialization

149:4.3On this same oc­ca­sion the Mas­ter talked to the group about the de­sir­abil­ity of pos­sess­ing well-bal­anced char­ac­ters. He rec­og­nized that it was nec­es­sary for most men to de­vote them­selves to the mas­tery of some vo­ca­tion, but he de­plored all ten­dency to­ward over­spe­cial­iza­tion, to­ward be­com­ing nar­row-minded and cir­cum­scribed in life’s ac­tiv­i­ties. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that any virtue, if car­ried to ex­tremes, may be­come a vice. Je­sus al­ways preached tem­per­ance and taught con­sis­tency—pro­por­tion­ate ad­just­ment of life prob­lems. He pointed out that over­much sym­pa­thy and pity may de­gen­er­ate into se­ri­ous emo­tional in­sta­bil­ity; that en­thu­si­asm may drive on into fa­nati­cism. He dis­cussed one of their for­mer as­so­ciates whose imag­i­na­tion had led him off into vi­sion­ary and im­prac­ti­cal un­der­tak­ings. At the same time he warned them against the dan­gers of the dull­ness of over­con­ser­va­tive medi­ocrity.

• method › Jesus deplored overspecialization
• method › value in mingling with diverse groups

149:4.6While it is true that many men and women must as­sid­u­ously ap­ply them­selves to some def­i­nite pur­suit as a liveli­hood vo­ca­tion, it is nev­er­the­less wholly de­sir­able that hu­man be­ings should cul­ti­vate a wide range of cul­tural fa­mil­iar­ity with life as it is lived on earth. Truly ed­u­cated per­sons are not sat­is­fied with re­main­ing in ig­no­rance of the lives and do­ings of their fel­lows.

• historically › Jew’s custom to sit while teaching

151:1.1About this time Je­sus first be­gan to em­ploy the para­ble method of teach­ing the mul­ti­tudes that so fre­quently gath­ered about him. Since Je­sus had talked with the apos­tles and oth­ers long into the night, on this Sun­day morn­ing very few of the group were up for break­fast; so he went out by the sea­side and sat alone in the boat, the old fish­ing boat of An­drew and Pe­ter, which was al­ways kept at his dis­posal, and med­i­tated on the next move to be made in the work of ex­tend­ing the king­dom. But the Mas­ter was not to be alone for long. Very soon the peo­ple from Ca­per­naum and near-by vil­lages be­gan to ar­rive, and by ten o’clock that morn­ing al­most one thou­sand were as­sem­bled on shore near Je­sus’ boat and were clam­or­ing for at­ten­tion. Pe­ter was now up and, mak­ing his way to the boat, said to Je­sus, “Mas­ter, shall I talk to them?” But Je­sus an­swered, “No, Pe­ter, I will tell them a story.” And then Je­sus be­gan the recital of the para­ble of the sower, one of the first of a long se­ries of such para­bles which he taught the throngs that fol­lowed af­ter him. This boat had an el­e­vated seat on which he sat (for it was the cus­tom to sit when teach­ing) while he talked to the crowd as­sem­bled along the shore. Af­ter Pe­ter had spo­ken a few words, Je­sus said:

• method › Jesus deplored overspecialization

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

• historically › Pharisees believed untaught people accursed

162:2.9Eber and his as­sis­tants re­fused to ar­rest Je­sus; they re­turned to their meet­ing place with­out him. When, there­fore, the chief priests and the Phar­isees up­braided Eber and his as­sis­tants be­cause they had not brought Je­sus with them, Eber only replied: “We feared to ar­rest him in the midst of the mul­ti­tude be­cause many be­lieve in him. Be­sides, we never heard a man speak like this man. There is some­thing out of the or­di­nary about this teacher. You would all do well to go over to hear him.” And when the chief rulers heard these words, they were as­ton­ished and spoke taunt­ingly to Eber: “Are you also led astray? Are you about to be­lieve in this de­ceiver? Have you heard that any of our learned men or any of the rulers have be­lieved in him? Have any of the scribes or the Phar­isees been de­ceived by his clever teach­ings? How does it come that you are in­flu­enced by the be­hav­ior of this ig­no­rant mul­ti­tude who know not the law or the proph­ets? Do you not know that such un­taught peo­ple are ac­cursed?” And then an­swered Eber: “Even so, my mas­ters, but this man speaks to the mul­ti­tude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the down­hearted, and his words were com­fort­ing even to our souls. What can there be wrong in these teach­ings even though he may not be the Mes­siah of the Scrip­tures? And even then does not our law re­quire fair­ness? Do we con­demn a man be­fore we hear him?” And the chief of the San­hedrin was wroth with Eber and, turn­ing upon him, said: “Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Gal­i­lee? Search the Scrip­tures, and you will dis­cover that out of Gal­i­lee arises no prophet, much less the Mes­siah.”

• historically › John Mark wisely sent to public school

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

• purpose of education › to foster supreme purpose of life

195:10.17Even sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion could help in this great spir­i­tual re­nais­sance if it would pay more at­ten­tion to the work of teach­ing youth how to en­gage in life plan­ning and char­ac­ter pro­gres­sion. The pur­pose of all ed­u­ca­tion should be to fos­ter and fur­ther the su­preme pur­pose of life, the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jes­tic and well-bal­anced per­son­al­ity. There is great need for the teach­ing of moral dis­ci­pline in the place of so much self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Upon such a foun­da­tion re­li­gion may con­tribute its spir­i­tual in­cen­tive to the en­large­ment and en­rich­ment of mor­tal life, even to the se­cu­rity and en­hance­ment of life eter­nal.