Hi everyone, In this video we're going to talk about the influence of the Bible in education. It's important to understand the influence that the Bible has had because this is one of the evidences that the Bible is a divine book. That is, a humanly written book would not be able to have the kind of influence that the Bible has had. It's had a great influence in the world in various fields. And education is one of those fields. So, in this video, we're going to look at how the Bible influenced or enabled the development of modern education.


Education in the Ancient Rome
The followers of the Lord Jesus in the first century were living in the Greco Roman world. So the question arises, what kind of education existed in ancient Rome and Greece, we have artifacts like this, and we have the writings of some historians which tell us that there were some forms of tutoring that used to go on, then it's also important to realize that this education was not for everyone. Only aristocratic boys in Rome used to get education. So education was viewed as something that only elites needed. If there was a child whose father was either a king nor a senior official in the kingdom. Then perhaps it was thought that he needed education, not other people.


Education in Jewish Culture
Now into this world, enter Biblical Christianity. Now, those of us who are familiar with the Bible, know that the first followers of Christ were Jews, and even before the Lord Jesus came to this world, the Jews had their Old Testament Scriptures, and this is a verse, an instruction that Moses, an ancient leader of the people of Israel had given them. So he says, like this here, oh Israel, the statutes and the judgments that I speak in your years this day, that you may learn, guard and practice them. Do not forget these laws, teach it to your sons and your sons' sons. So if you read the early part of the Bible, it's called the law. But strictly speaking, it doesn't just contain laws. It also contains some history. So the leaders of the people like Moses, were trying to communicate to the people of Israel that it is essential for them to know these things. It is essential for them to know God's laws because it will help them have a good life and a wholesome life. And they also need the narrative of God's story to help them make sense of the world.

So the first part of the Bible begins with creation, the creation of the universe and how certain things happen in the world, how the world came to be the way it is, and so on and so forth. So, Moses was telling the people of Israel that it's important for y'all to know these things. So here we have a prototype of education, where the people are commanded to teach their own children now the people of Israel did not do a very good job at this. They forgot God's ways, went against God, they got punished for that also. It took them almost 1000 years to get into this practice of sticking to their basic faith. And communicating it to their children, but eventually, they got it. This is a quote from the Talmud, which is a collection of Jewish writings. It was compiled after the time of Christ that describes the situation that was there at the time of Christ and just before that time, it says here that there were 394 courts in Jerusalem corresponding to the number of synagogues and the number of schools and the number of schools for the scribes.

So in ancient Israel because of this biblical instruction, it developed a culture of learning, so these very small children would be taught by their own parents, and then every town or village had a synagogue, and the children above the age of six were educated in the synagogue so schooling or education was an essentially religious practice that developed in the Jewish nation. And the first Christians were Jews, and they carried this heritage with them.


Great Commission
The final parting instruction that the Lord Jesus gave his disciples is called the Great Commission. So Jesus told them that they should go to all nations and teach them the things that He has commanded them. So first of all, they are to teach the good news that is the gospel. Good news that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Who has died and risen again, they were supposed to teach that, but they were not supposed to stop at that. They were to teach people who would come to become disciples of Christ, all that Jesus had taught His original 12 disciples. So here in this instruction that Jesus gave His disciples, we have a mandate for a process of teaching.


Education after 100 AD
Sure enough, the early church started practicing this. So as the number of converts or the number of seekers who were interested in knowing what Christianity was all about, as this number increased, the practice of teaching them became more organized. So there were catechetical schools that developed so this is a picture of one of those schools at Alexandria. And in these schools, the students or the new converts or the people who are seeking interest in Christianity. These people were taught Christian doctrine, but apart from that they were also taught grammar, mathematics and medicine. It was thought that they would be able to understand the Bible better or put their faith to practice better and live better lives, if they also knew these little bits of secular knowledge if they have the secular knowledge apart from the Bible.

So this is a comment from William Boyd, one of the historians who's done research on education and he says that due to these catechetical schools, Christianity became for the first time a definite factor in the culture of the world. So these schools became spheres of influence. One of the most influential figures in the first few centuries after the time of Christ in Europe, was Augustine. Augustine wrote a book called The Doctrine Christiana, that means Christian teaching. So he wrote a book about teaching. And in this book, he says that secular studies will aid students in the interpretation of the Bible. So if you have a good knowledge of history, if you have a good knowledge of grammar, then you will be able to interpret and understand the Bible better. So this was the motivation for secular education in the early centuries. Now when Christians started practicing education, they brought about a new practice.

So this is a quote from Tatiane. He is one of the church fathers from Assyria, and he is addressing secular Greeks here and he says, we teach everyone including girls and women, after all, the Lord Jesus said that the gospel should be preached to everybody. So if the gospel is for everybody, then it follows that education also is for everyone. So you will recall how earlier we had seen that in pagan Rome and Greece, education was confined to boys and that too only aristocratic boys, but here it is available to anyone who is interested in the teachings of Jesus Christ. So William Ramsay, another historian comments like this, he says Christianity's aim was universal. Not education, confined to the rich as among the Greeks and Romans, and it did not make distinctions of sex.

So because of Christianity, we see that education in ancient Rome and Greece moved out of the confines of the elites and moved out from being just a male thing, but now spread and became more universal. Now you can understand this process of people coming to Christ like this. As the disciples, the early disciples of Christ would spread the message, there were many people who were interested in knowing about it. So they were taught how some of these people would choose to become disciples of Christ. And when the next generation comes, the disciples of Christ would definitely be keen that their children would have the same knowledge from a young age, and so began the practice of teaching children. So as the Medieval Ages progressed, there were a number of schools that developed, so this is a painting of King Alfred, one of the famous kings of England, visiting a monastery school. So this is in the ninth century.

So during that time, there were schools and these schools were attached to churches and monasteries, and children in Europe received some sort of basic education. Now these schools no doubt decayed over the dark ages, but nevertheless, this was the education that was going on. Commenting on this education, HG Wells, a historian and writer writes like this, he says, the Catholic Church provided what the Roman Republic had lacked, that is a system of popular teaching, a number of universities and methods of intellectual communication. So HG Wells is commenting on the education that was bizarre in Europe in the medieval ages, and after that, and he says that the church was highly instrumental for education. And before the church, there was a pagan Roman Empire and there was no education there. Now, HG Wells is not a Christian, he does not have a point to prove or he does not have his ideology to support in making this statement.

In fact, he goes on to say like this, though the Catholic church opened up the prospect of the modern educational state in Europe. It is equally certain that the Catholic Church never intended to do anything of that sort. It did not send out knowledge with its blessings. It let it loose inadvertently. Here he says that the Catholic Church ended up pioneering the modern educational state, which is there all over the world, but that was not their intention. He says they did not want to bless the world as a secular person. HG Wells certainly does not endorse the Catholic Church and he says they did not intend to send blessing on the world, but they let this blessing loose inadvertently.

This is exactly our point here. If you notice, I did not title this video as the influence of the church or the Catholic Church. I titled it as the influence of the Bible. So we don't necessarily endorse the Catholic Church or everything that it did. But what we understand from here is that the good things that the Catholic Church did, perhaps even inadvertently, did those things because they were influenced at least to some extent by the Bible. The Bible inspired the church to spread education and pioneer the modern educational state.


Martin Luther
Even those of us who are not very familiar with the Bible, or the history of Christianity are probably familiar with Martin Luther. He is known for starting the Reformation in Europe a500 years ago. So during the medieval ages, education existed, but it was not flourishing very well. But with Martin Luther certain changes came. First of all, Luther took a stand for education. He said, Education is needed, because people need to understand both the word of Scripture and the nature of the world in which the word would take root.

He says that education is needed because people need to read the Bible. People need to read and understand the Bible. That's why education is needed. And when we teach them, it's not enough just to read the Bible to them, but we also need to teach them something about the world because the Bible after all, is God's message to man. It speaks about His world. It speaks about why the world is the way it is, how to make sense of the world and so on. So if we have some understanding of the world, then that will enhance our understanding of the Bible. So that's why Luther said education is very important.

William Boyd, the historian, says that he wanted a system of education as free and unrestricted as the gospel he preached and indifferent like the gospel to distinctions of sex or of social class. So here you can see that people need to get educated to read the Bible, but who needs to read the Bible? Well, the Bible is addressed for everyone. The gospel is for all, for rich and poor, for boys, for girls, for men and women. So Luther endorsed universal education because he endorsed a universal gospel and he got that from the Bible. Luther also said that it is the duty of the government to compel its subjects to keep their children in school. So Luther saw that not all parents were motivated to send their children to school and perhaps that would have an adverse effect on the children.

So he said that the government should make it compulsory for children to be sent to school and he also advocated government funding for schools. Now every one of us may not agree with all these policies about, you know, how involved the government should be with education and so on. But the point here is that Luther wanted the government to be involved so that everyone could be educated, and he wanted everyone to be educated, because he believed that everyone needs to read the Bible, and this shows the profound influence that the Bible has had on education.


Luther’s Friends
Who were Luther's friends? The intellectual heavyweight behind Martin Luther's actions, was Philip Melanchthon. So he was called the church's teacher. So although he was not hands-on involved in the starting of schools or apologists, he was very much behind the scenes involved in education because he was a master of theology. He understood many subjects, and he was a very knowledgeable person, and he would have mentored the people who started the first modern schools and colleges in Germany. There was another person called Johannes Strum, one of the church men of the Lutheran church, and he introduced the concept of graded education. So today we have 12 grades and after that we have college and university. Well, where did it all begin? It began in the Lutheran church.

This is Johannes Burgenhagen, a Lutheran pastor and he is called the father of the Deutsche Volk Schule. That is the German public school. Luther wanted the whole population of Germany to be educated, because he was involved in so many things because he was the leader of the Reformation. So these are some of the people who implemented his ideas. All of them were believers in Jesus Christ, all of them were motivated by the Bible. It is their devotion to Christ or devotion or commitment to the Bible that motivated them to do the pioneering things that they did for education.


Kindergarten
Well before 12 grades we have kindergarten. Kindergarten has not existed since the very beginning. It started at a definite point of time, the person who started it was Friedrich Froebel, another Lutheran, and he writes like this, he says, Let us protect our children. Let us steer them away from the harmful chase after material things and the damaging passion for distractions. Let us educate them to stand with their feet rooted in God's earth, but with their heads reaching even into heaven, there to behold truth. So kindergarten was started by a man who believed he was doing it because he wanted children to start seeking God from a young age.

He said that, you know, if children are just left on their own, then it's possible for them to get distracted, it's possible for them to become indiscipline, this will adversely affect their lives. So we want to guide children properly and the right way to guide children is to encourage them to seek God. And that was the purpose for starting kindergarten. So Good and Teller, two authors in their book called The History of Western Education, say that Friedrich Froebel's motivation was that the world of man and nature are connected by God. Children need to learn that at a young age, how do you relate to the world outside? In order to relate to the world outside you need to first properly relate to God. And this was Froebel's conviction, and that's why he started kindergarten.


Father of Modern Education
This is Jan Comenius, or Jan Comiskey and this is a currency note that commemorates and honors him. So he lived in Bohemia around 500 years ago. What is today the Czech Republic. He was a church leader of the Czech brethren. And he was also a pioneer in education. This is taken from the New World encyclopedia. So, the source calls them a teacher, a scientist and educator, and a writer. He was a Moravian protestant Bishop and also a religious refugee and one of the earliest champions of universal education. So, he is called the father of modern education. Now he was primarily a church leader, he was a pastor. But because he saw the way in which the Bible can be taught to people and people need to learn the Bible.

Because of this concern, he also became a pioneer of education. So people did not invent modern education, just because they thought of it in isolation, it was just a byproduct of the devotion and concern that people have for the Bible and the spreading of its teachings. Almost everything every point that Jan Comenius made about education about teaching people was accompanied by a quote from the Bible. So this is a prayer of his that has been recorded. Have mercy oh Lord on your heritage. This is in his brief proposal on the renewal of schools in Bohemia, so all the reform of the medieval schools that Jan Comenius was attempting, he was doing as part of his devotion to God.


Modern Universities
These are some of the influences that he had. He was influential in the starting of the Royal Society of science in England. Halle University was the first modern university in Germany. Later on, it was merged with the Wittenberg university that Martin Luther started. So, Jan Comenius was influential in the starting of this university. And he also inspired the Puritans. In fact, the Puritans of America invited Jan Comenius to take over Harvard University which was a college that they had just recently started, and they started at in order to train people to teach God's word. So this is a quote from a secular historian George Marsden. He writes like this One of the remarkable facts of American history is that only six years after their settlement in the Massachusetts wilderness, the Puritans established what soon became a reputable College. Higher Education was for them a priority in civilizational building.

So of course, the Puritans who went to America were trying to start a new civilization there, and there have been many civilizations in the past before them, but these civilizations in the past did not give a priority to education. But these Puritans did, why? Because they were concerned about the spread of the teachings of the Bible. They were concerned that all the settlers who came to this new place i.e. America needed to be taught God's word, the children needed to be taught, the churches needed to be taught, and that's why they set up Harvard University to teach the Bible and also other subjects. Now in this context, it's worth noting the word University, the word University means unity in diversity.

There are many subjects taught in and at the university. So that's the diversity Unity Cup. The people who started the first universities were motivated by the Bible, and they believed that it is theology that unifies everything, everything, all subjects, whether it's history, science, art, mathematics, technology, or any subject, everything, the whole system of knowledge about the world. It all is tied together and pirated in theology. The world works or the world makes sense because of God, because of what God has told us about the world. That's why they coined the word University.


Elementary Education
Another leader of the Reformation was John Calvin, and he was based in Geneva in Switzerland. He had a plan for the city and that plan included a system of elementary education in the vernacular for all including reading, writing, arithmetic, etc, and religion and the establishment of secondary schools for the purpose of training civil and church leaders. So everywhere the Reformation had its impact which led to the blossoming of education, that reformation was an attempt to return to the Bible. And when people return to the Bible, it has a positive effect on education.


Why so much Stress on Education?
Now, why did the Reformers, one of the early Protestants, lay so much stress on education? So here's the answer from a historian, Gabriel compiled, writing about the history of education and he says, like this, the teaching, that each man is responsible for his own salvation logically led to the conclusion that everyone needed to be educated. Now, this is a profound statement. The Bible teaches that salvation does not come just because you go through a certain set of rituals. It does not come because you just do good deeds like you go here or give some money to somebody or something. Like that.

The Bible does not teach that salvation comes because you are part of a certain community or a certain institution. Instead, the Bible teaches that you will be saved. If you understand and accept and respond to the universal truth. About this word, the universal truth. This world has been created by a holy God, and we all have offended this God and this God Himself has come down in the person of Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sins, and He is the one who died and rose again from the dead. If you believe all these things, if you put your trust in Jesus Christ and if you decide to surrender your life to Him, then you will be saved.

Now this is the message of the Bible. Now, needless to say, the Bible teaches that salvation requires that people understand these things. Well, this message can be said in a few words, but people need to understand this message properly. So the Bible provides a lot of details. So people need to know how to read the Bible and understand it so that they can respond to this message and be saved. And fulfill the purpose for which they have been created. So here you see how the Bible directly provided a motivation for the establishment of education.


Sign Languages
What about the people who don't have the privileges that we have? All of us are endowed with natural abilities, but not everyone has the same abilities. In the ancient pagan civilizations, people who had a handicap were not treated well. But this was a Catholic priest, Abbe’ Charles Michel de Lepe. He is called the father of the Deaf. He invented sign language, and he was motivated by a desire for deaf people. To hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So today, deaf people benefit so much from sign language. And, you know, perhaps different governments in various countries of the world would have some initiative to educate the Deaf people but it all began with sign languages invented because somebody was concerned that deaf people also need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. There was a person called Thomas Gallaudet and he was a Protestant pastor. And he brought this sign language to America. And there he opened the first School of the Deaf.

Later on, he went on to start a university and as he was leaving America to go to Europe, this is what he told us people there when I come back from Europe, I hope to teach you much about the Bible about God and Christ. So here you see the pioneer for education among the Deaf in America was a pastor, a church leader who was motivated by this concern that his people including the deaf people in his church are in his locality, need to hear about the love that Jesus has for them.


Braille
What about the blind? In ancient times, blind infants were killed means, they were exposed to the elements of nature and left to die. If that was not done to them, if they survived their infancy, then if they were boys, and they were made as galley slaves, so you can imagine in the days when ships did not have engines, it was these slaves who would continuously be rowing these ships. Blind girls were made into prostitutes. What else could they do? That was the thought in paganism but during the Middle Ages, Christians ran asylums protection centers for the blind, so that they would not be mistreated by others.

And they try to teach these blind children by using raised letters on wax and words. So it was very difficult. It was not easy for them to do it. But nevertheless, they tried to teach these children at least how to feel and understand letters and words. Now there was a person called Louis Braille and he lost his eyesight at a very young age because of an accident in his father's workshop. So you can imagine it's a horrible thing to happen for a person. If this kind of event would happen to us, perhaps the most of us would grow up with bitterness, sadness and what life has given us or what has happened in our lives. But as a teenager, Louis Braille went to church and he became an organist, and he really enjoyed playing the organ. And he went on to develop the Braille language, which is a special language for blind people to read.

This is what he says. I'm convinced that my mission has finished on dart. I tasted yesterday, the supreme delight, God condescended to brighten my eyes with the splendor of eternal hope. Here he is talking about his own salvation, because he believes that because of what Jesus has done for him, he is going to have an eternal life. So that's a hope for him. And this also inspired him to do something constructive instead of moaning and complaining about his misfortune. So this is the effect that the Bible has on a person. Just imagine what Louis Braille would do if he was just another person and not if there was no Christianity in his life, and he just underwent this misfortune. What was his attitude be? Well, the change is evident when you see the person's devotion to the Bible. It is his devotion to the Bible that made him convinced that God has something good for him, and that enabled him to share that goodness with others. The world has changed since then.


Sunday School
Many of us perhaps are aware that in the Industrial Revolution in England, there was a lot of child labor that was used. And at this time, this is the 19th century there were schools in England, but what do you expect poor people to do? Poor people would want their children to earn money rather than to go to school, they couldn't spare that resource. So instead of sending their children to school, poor people make their children work in the factories and these children would work very long hours, six days a week. And they would often get into crime because there was no one to love them, no one to care for them and nurture them. The children would get into crime and as they grew up, they would get into more serious crime, and then many of them would land up in jail and it was very difficult to handle them.

Now there was one person who looked at what was happening, and he said vice can be better prevented than cured. In other words, we should do something for these children and straighten them out when they are young. Rather than wait for them to get adults, themselves and get into trouble and then try to straighten them out. This person was Robert Raikes. So what was his solution to the problem? He founded something that perhaps most people who have been to church would know today. It's called Sunday school. He started the first Sunday school in 1780. So remember, these children were working in the factories for six days a week. So Sunday was the only day that were free.

So he called these children on Sundays. And he taught them, so he actually wanted to teach them the Bible. But of course, for that he first had to teach them how to read and thus began their education. So, he went on to establish many Sunday schools in different places in England. This is a picture of one of the early Sunday schools, and he died in 1811 20 years after his death. You know, the movement spread and 85% of British children were attending Sunday schools, so you can understand that because of him. Britain was on course to becoming a literate nation. Here you see one man's concern, first of all, why should anyone feel sympathetic for poor children? It's his love for Jesus that motivated that. And how can we help children? How can we prevent children who do not have a proper family background from going astray? Well, the Bible was the answer for Robert Raikes.


Higher Education
Most of what we said up till now was about schools. Let's have a brief look at higher education. These are ruins at the Greek city of Thallus. Sorry, the Greek city at Miletus, which was the home of Thales who is known as the first Greek philosopher. Now he and other philosophers established some schools that are centers of higher learning. But although these schools were there they were not they were not permanent institutions. They just relied on individual initiative. If there's one philosopher and he is a little influential or he is, he comes across as convincing then he would gather a few fans and then they would learn under him There were no permanent libraries that were established.

There were no scholarly gills, or no society of scientists or no society of historians or anything that came out of these schools. So the Greeks had some sort of higher learning, but nothing much came out of it. In fact, these schools died a natural death when the Greeks lost their faith and rationality and gave into mysticism in the form of Gnosticism and other movements. But while the Greek system of higher education died, something else was happening in the Christian world. Some Christians who wanted to get away from the world went away from the regular population and they established monasteries. Monasteries, would grow their own crops, and they would spend the rest of the day praying and also writing and copying and learning.

So, this is Benedict of Nursia, responsible for establishing one set of monasteries and he is called today the godfather of libraries because his monasteries had huge libraries, and the people who lived there would copy them out. They would also do research on the text so that text would be the Bible books by other ancient Christian authors, and also the classics of Greek civilization. So monasteries became a center of learning. And then the modern university grew out of the monastery. So the first modern university in the world was the University of Bologna and the purpose for which it was established was the teaching of church law. So here again, you see that it is Christianity that influenced or pioneered higher education. Although this university was initially started to teach church law, later on other things were also taught. Dissections of human bodies, which is a routine thing today in medical studies.

It began in Bologna in the year 1300. That's where we get our modern education, modern medical education that we have today. If you look at some of the famous universities that you see today, you'll find that many of them were established by Christians who wanted to teach people the Bible. So for examples, Harvard was started by Congregationalists and Yale, and Princeton, was started by the Presbyterians and so on and so forth, in Europe before these American universities in Europe Oxford, the University of Paris, Cambridge, Basil, Heidelberg, all these places grew out of the church. They were initially just started to train church leaders and teachers of the Bible.

So historian comments like this, he says, Every college institution founded in America prior to the Revolutionary War, except the University of Pennsylvania had Christian roots. There are two other authors who have written a book called What if Jesus had never been born? And they say like this, every school you see, public or private, religious or secular is a visible reminder of the religion of Jesus Christ. So is every college or university. So, here you see a summary of the influence of the Bible in education. We began by seeing how it is the gospel, it is the great commission of Jesus Christ, that motivated Christian and that's why they began, schools to teach seekers and converts and modern education grew out of that. The profound influence of the Bible in education is one of the many evidences that this book's origin is not just human. But it is a divine book. Thank you very much.