What Is Schooling?

In the autumn when the public schools are beginning their sessions, it is well for parents, teachers, and pupils alike to answer for themselves anew the question as to what schooling is, It is not merely the learning of what are called facts. It is not, on the other hand, simply training in how to do things. It is not even just a study of the way in which seeming human knowledge is used in daily living. If education were nothing more than the sort of formality that has been developed by mortal teachers throughout the centuries, it would indeed be limited and of little value. Reasoning in accord with Principle is the truth of education, which is much broader than any academic system. What is essential is the unfoldment of divine Life itself as activity in conscious order. This is the ideal expression of infinite Mind, of which any mortal form of drill is, at the best, a very unsatisfactory counterfeit.

Since this is so, one may naturally ask why any kind of human instruction is ever worth while. Why should one go to school at all, or try to learn theories that are changing every instant? The answer is, that for such a makeshift sense of discipline there must be the true idea. The work of each one, in school or out, is to discern and prove the true idea in place of the supposed opposite. That is, each one should take both scholastic lessons and seeming daily experience as opportunity for knowing Truth and practicing in accord with it. Schools will improved in proportion as their false theories give way to the demonstration of infinite Principle. Each one who turns his whole attention to Principle aids in this improvement even while he is proving his own education. No present sense of things can be effectively done away with until it is actually displaced by the divine ideal. Going to school, sending one's child to school, or teaching school, must always be, then, when rightly considered real opportunity for expressing infinite Truth.

This schooling is never limited, of course, to human methods. All genuine doing, all conscious manifestation of divine intelligence, is education, since it can exist only as the unfoldment of Principle. Such activity is the constant realization of Immanuel, or "God with us," taking the place of suppositional ignorance and inaction. In other words, the continual finding of the omnipresent Christ, as the all-sufficient interpreter of omnipresent God, immortal Mind, is eternal schooling. The true idea, manifesting the one Mind, incessantly displaces false beliefs. This is progressive Salvation. To turn one's attention wholly thus to divine Principle and its idea is to depend upon God and the Christ, Father and Son, demonstrable cause and effect, as the sole instructive power. The unfoldment of the one infinite Mind and its one infinite manifestation is the only real learning. Sooner or later all engaged in education of any sort must recognize their responsibility for the knowing and proving of this truth. On page 18 of "No and Yes" Mrs. Eddy declares, "If the schoolmaster is not Christ, the school gets things wrong, and knows it not; but the teacher is morally responsible."

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
Among the Churches
September 25, 1920
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit