Editorial June 18, 1927 Issue

Education

Ella W. Hoag

There is perhaps no subject which interests more deeply a large proportion of mankind than education. Men have come to accept the statement, "Knowledge is power." as a truism, and ignorance is consequently almost universally looked upon as undesirable. Indeed, so reprehensible is it considered that men are generally ashamed to admit that it belongs to them individually or collectively. Ignorance has, however, frequently been looked upon as a positive quality rather than as a mere negation, and education has therefore been approached too often from the wrong standpoint. The effort is made to repel ignorance as though it were an active entity with a power to resist proper education or instruction. Instead, ignorance is but the belief that intelligence is not omnipresent; it is but the claim that God, or Mind, is absent.

Herbert Spencer once said, "To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge." And the ordinary definition of education includes not only "the impartation or acquisition of knowledge," but also the "discipline of character." In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 289) Mrs. Eddy has declared that "all education is work;" while on page 252 she says, "The entire purpose of true education is to make one not only know the truth but live it." Although in these two statements our Leader agrees with the definition others have given, she makes the distinction between all true and false education when she declares that it is "the truth" one must learn to know and live.

When Christian Science reveals that there is in reality but one infinite Mind, which knows all infinitely, it exposes ignorance in all its falsity. Simultaneously, Christian Science shows that all ignorance can be dispelled or replaced by the intelligence of divine Mind. This, therefore, opens the door to the annulment of every claim of ignorance, since it reveals the correct method of education—the education which depends entirely on the power of perfect, infinite Mind to reveal through its own truths its own omnipresence.

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