The Roots of Education “Every school you see – public or private, religious or secular – is a visible reminder of the religion of Jesus Christ. So is every college and university.” Dr. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe document in their “What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?” book that the phenomenon of education for the masses has its roots in Christianity. The pursuit of the knowledge of God in a systematic, philosophical and in depth way gave rise to the phenomenon of universities all around the world. It was the Christian faith that gave rise to the idea of higher learning.

1. The Roots of Education

3. The Roots of Education

4. Deuteronomy 6:1-9
1 "Now this is the
commandment, and
these are the statutes
and judgments which
the LORD your God
has commanded to
teach you, that you
may observe them in
the land which you
are crossing over to
possess,

5. 2that you may fear
the LORD your
God, to keep all
His statutes and
His
commandments
which I command
you, you and your
son and your
grandson, all the
days of your life,
and that your days
may be prolonged.

6. 3Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to
observe it, that it may be well with you, and that
you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your
fathers has promised you …in a land flowing with
milk and honey.

7. 4"Hear, O Israel:
The LORD our
God, the LORD
is One!
5You shall love the
LORD your God
with all your
heart, with all
your soul, and
with all your
strength.

8. 6"And these
words which I
command you
today shall be in
your heart.

9. 7You shall teach
them diligently to
your children,
and shall talk of
them when you
sit in your house,
when you walk
by the way, when
you lie down,
and when you
rise up.

10. 8You shall bind them
as a sign on your
hand, and they shall
be as frontlets
between your eyes.

11. 9You shall write them on the doorposts of
your house and on your gates.

12. “Every school you see - public or private, religious
or secular - is a visible reminder of the religion of
Jesus Christ. So is every college and university.”

13. Dr. James Kennedy and
Jerry Newcombe
document in their “What
If Jesus Had Never Been
Born?” book that the
phenomenon of education
for the masses has its
roots in Christianity.

14. The pursuit of the
knowledge of God in a
systematic,
philosophical and in-
depth way gave rise to
the phenomenon of
universities all around
the world.
It was the Christian
faith that gave rise to
the idea of higher
learning.

15. THE GIFT OF LITERACY
Christianity is a tremendous force for education.
Most of the world's languages were first set to
writing by Christian missionaries. The first
book in most languages of the world has been the
Bible.

16. • Christianity has been the greatest force
for promoting literacy worldwide
throughout history.

17. The Christian missionary movement in the 19th Century
pioneered tens of thousands of schools throughout Africa,
Asia and the Pacific Islands – providing education for
countless millions, even in the remotest jungles, giving the
gift of literacy to tribes which had never before had a
written language.

18. THE GREATEST TEACHER
There is no doubt that Jesus Christ was the greatest
Teacher the world has ever known. When He spoke,
“…they were astonished at His teaching, for He
taught them as one having authority…”
Mark 1:22.

19. The life, teachings and example of Jesus Christ have
profoundly influenced the whole development of
education worldwide. The Great Commission of our
Lord Jesus Christ was to “make disciples of all
the nations…teaching them…” Matthew
28:19 - 20.

20. The Apostles took the example and commands of
the Lord Jesus Christ seriously, “…they did not
cease teaching…” Acts 5:42. One of the
Biblical requirements for a Christian leader is that
he must be “…able to teach” 1 Tim 3:2.

21. SCHOOLS FOR ALL
From the very
beginning
Christians were
establishing schools.
Those who sought to
become members of
the Christian Church
went through a two to
three year teaching
programme where
they were catechised

22. In the 2nd Century AD, Justin
Martyr established catechetical
schools in Ephesus and Rome.

23. Clement established an
excellent school in
Alexandria.

24. Prominent Christian leaders
such as Origen and Athanasius
were graduates of the
Alexandrian School.
The school at Alexandria taught
doctrine, mathematics, medicine
and grammar.

25. By the 4th Century church and cathedral schools,
maintained by pastors, taught Christian doctrine,
grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music,
geometry and astronomy.

26. Amongst the many
innovations in
Christian education
was that these
Christian schools
taught everybody,
including girls and
women.
Formally educating
both males &
females was a
Christian
innovation.

27. As W. M. Ramsy concluded:
Christianity aimed at
“universal education, not
education confined to the
rich, as among the Greeks
and Romans…and it made no
distinction of sex.”
St. Augustine observed that
Christian women were
better educated than the
pagan male philosophers!

28. A CULTURAL REVOLUTION
The Greeks and Romans before the birth of Christ
did not formally educate girls. Only boys from the
privileged classes obtained an education.

29. Christianity revolutionised education by making it
available to all classes and both genders.

30. The secular historian Will Durant
wrote that early Christianity
offered itself “without
reservation to all
individuals, classes, and
nations; it was not limited to
one people, like Judaism, nor to
the freed men of one state, like
the official cults of Greece and
Rome.”
(Caesar and Christ,
by Will Durant, 1972).

31. King Alfred the Great of England, in the 9th
Century, ensured that both his sons and
daughters obtained a thorough education,
including in Latin, and promoted the church
schools throughout the kingdom.

33. TO KNOW GOD'S WORD AND
GOD'S WORLD
The German Reformer,
Martin Luther, taught that
cultivating the human mind
was absolutely essential
“because people needed
both to understand the
Word of Scripture and the
nature of the world in
which the Word
would take root.”

34. Luther said
that parents
who failed to
teach their
children
were
“shameful
and
despicable.”

35. “Luther, in fact,
wanted a system of
education as free
and unrestricted
as the Gospel he
preached, indifferent,
like the Gospel, to
distinctions of sex or of
social class.”
(The History of Western Education,
William Boyd, 1965).

36. The Reformer, John Calvin,
also advocated
universal education.

37. His Geneva plan included “a system of elementary
education in the vernacular for all, including
reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and religion,
and the establishment of secondary schools for the
purpose of training citizens for civil and
ecclesiastical leadership.”

38. John Comenius
pioneered schools
in Bohemia,
teaching children
about God, man
and nature.

39. Civil leaders at that time
harboured a “distrust of
formal book learning.”
The idea that every child
should attend school did
not originate from secular
authorities,
but from Christian
Reformers such as
Luther, Melanchthon,
Comenius and Calvin.
Melanchthon

40. GRADED EDUCATION
Graded levels of education was first introduced in
the 16th Century by a German Lutheran layman,
Johann Sturm, who believed that this system
would motivate students to study, because they
would be rewarded by advancing to the next level.
Sturm introduced the gymnasium, in Strassburg in
1538.

41. KINDERGARTENS
Kindergartens were first established by Frederick
Froebel (1782 - 1852). Froebel was a devout
Christian who believed that the world of man and
nature were connected by God.

42. The son of a German Lutheran
pastor, Froebel developed the
idea of a school that would allow
young children to grow under
the care of an expert gardener
(a teacher) in a children's garden
(kindergarten) because he had
often helped his father in the
family garden.

43. EDUCATION FOR THE DEAF
Education for the deaf
was also pioneered by
Christians.
Charles L'Epee
developed a sign
language for formally
teaching the deaf,
in 1775.

44. Thomas Gallaudet, a congregational
clergyman, opened the first school for the
deaf in the USA in 1817.

45. Gallaudet taught not only the
three R's, but also the fourth
R, Religion, so that deaf
people could read, write, and
communicate what was most
important.

46. EDUCATION FOR THE BLIND
Before Jesus Christ,
human life in the
Greek and Roman
world was extremely
cheap. Infants born
with physical defects,
such as blindness,
were commonly
abandoned to die in
the wilderness

47. In Ancient Greece, blind
babies were cast into the sea.
Boys who survived their blind
infancy, or who became blind
later in childhood, usually
became galley slaves and blind
girls were commonly assigned
to a life of prostitution.

48. However, Jesus Christ
showed particular
compassion for the
blind, healing many
blind individuals
during His ministry
on earth.
When the Roman
persecution of the
Church ended, in the
4th Century,
Christians established
asylums for the blind.

49. In the 19th Century,
Louis Braille (1809 - 1852) a
dedicated Christian who had lost
his eyesight at age three,
developed his own alphabet
system of pinpricked raised
dots.

50. By 1834 he gave to the world
of the blind six embossed dots,
three high and two wide for
each letter of the alphabet.
Louis attended church every
Sunday and while still a
teenager became a proficient
church organist.

51. On his deathbed,
Braille said:
“I am convinced that my
mission is finished on
earth; I tasted yesterday the
supreme delight;
God condescended to
brighten my eyes for
the splendour of
eternal hope.”

52. It was Braille's vision that
enables millions of blind
people to read with their
fingers.

53. SUNDAY SCHOOLS
The industrial revolution
of the 18th Century led to
the widespread practice of
child labour in British
factories.
Robert Raikes
(1735 - 1811)
a printer by trade,
felt led to help the children
of the poor by teaching
them on Sundays.

54. Before the advent of child labour laws, children worked up
to twelve hours per day, six days a week.
But they were free on Sundays

55. Raikes began his first
Sunday school in 1780.
The boys and girls
came from some of the
poorest homes,
and learned
the skill of reading
and the riches of the Bible
in these Sunday Schools
which soon spread
worldwide.

56. UNIVERSITIES
Although the Greeks and
Romans had their philosophers,
poets and gifted thinkers before
the time of Christ,
there were no permanent
institutions of learning,
with no libraries,
no guilds of scholars
or students,
no educational research
institutions and the inductive
method was both ignored
and spurned.

57. Universities grew out of the monastic missionary centres.
From the first monastery established at Monte Cassino in
528AD, elaborate library systems were established.
The monks, who were effectively the missionaries who
discipled Europe, collected books and copied manuscripts.

58. The monks were required to read books daily. So
indispensable were libraries to the Benedictine
order, that the library was said to be a monastery's
armoury, similar to the armoury of a castle.

59. The first universities, in Paris, Oxford and
Cambridge in the 13th Century taught theology, law
and medicine. The first university lecturers were the
missionary monks who came from a long-standing
tradition of doing both physical and intellectual
work.

60. Monks were used to
getting dirt under their
fingernails. Therefore,
from the start, these
universities combined
manual and intellectual
activity, dissecting human
cadavers for forensic
research, and anatomical
study, and researching the
Scriptures in the original
Greek manuscripts, and
classical texts in Latin.

61. The empirical research which characterised these
first universities grew out of the medieval
monasteries where manual work and academic
study were seen as complementary.

62. Most universities began as Christian schools.
Harvard University, established in 1636, and Yale
University, both began as Congregational
institutions.

63. Princeton University started as a Presbyterian
college. Oxford, Paris, Cambridge, Heidelberg and
Basel were all founded by Christian ministers.

75. THE PRINTING PRESS
The greatest invention
in the field of human
learning, the printing
press, by Johannes
Gutenberg was also a
fruit of the Christian
faith.
The first book to be
printed on Gutenberg's
press was the Bible.

76. It is ironic that so many in higher institutes of learning today are so
hostile towards Christianity. Perhaps they are ignorant of the
Christian roots of universal education for all classes and both genders,
and the incomparable contribution of Christianity to worldwide
literacy, graded education and higher education.

77. The very
name,
university,
testifies to its
Christian
origins.
Uni Veritas
means
“One Truth”.
How ironic that
so many
university
professors
today do not
even believe
that there is an
objective truth!

78. “My people are destroyed from
lack of knowledge. ‘Because you
have rejected knowledge,
I will also reject you as My priests;
because you have ignored the
Law of your God,
I will also ignore your children.’”
Hosea 4:6

79. Isn't it time that teachers,
lecturers and professors
took an in depth look at
the greatest Teacher
the world has ever
known, the greatest
Book ever produced,
and the Faith which
inspired and
pioneered every
major branch of
education?

80. German Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther, warned:
"I am much afraid that schools will prove to be wide gates to hell,
unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures,
engraving them in the hearts of youth.

81. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures
do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not
constantly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt."

82. “We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell the next generation the
praiseworthy deeds of the Lord……

83. ….which He commanded our forefathers to
teach their children, so that the next
generation would know them,

84. even the children yet to be born, and they
in turn would tell their children. Then they
would put their trust in God and would not
forget His deeds but would keep His
commands.” Psalm 78:4-7

85. "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning
of Wisdom" Proverbs 1:7

86. “… Contend earnestly for the Faith which
was once for all delivered to the saints.”
Jude 3

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