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Martin Luther on Education
"I shall say nothing here about the pure pleasure a [person] gets from having studied, even though he never holds an office of any kind, how at home by himself he can read all kinds of things, talk and associate with educated people, and travel and do business in foreign lands...." God "has not given you your children and the means to support them simply so that you may do with them as you please, or train them just to get ahead in the world. You have been earnestly commanded to raise them for God's service." "You parents cannot prepare a more dependable treasure for your children than an education in the liberal arts. House and home burn down and disappear, but an education is easy to carry off." "What do we older folks live for if not for the care of the young, to teach and train them? The prosperity of a city does not depend on the accumulation of great riches, the building of walls and houses, many guns and armors. Rather, a city’s greatest and best prosperity, salvation, and power is this that it has many fine, learned, sensible, righteous, well-trained Christian citizens." "You should also take pains to urge governing authorities and parents to rule wisely and educate their children. They must be shown that they are obliged to do so, and that they are guilty of damnable sin if they do not do so, for by such neglect they undermine and lay waste both to the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world and are the worst enemies of God and humanity." From the website of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America |
"If I could leave the preaching
office and my other duties, or had to do so, there is no other office I would rather have
than that of schoolmaster or teacher ... for I know that next to that of preaching, this
is the best, greatest, and most useful office there is ... It surely has to be one of the
supreme virtues on earth faithfully to train other people’s children...."